UNIVERSITY  OF  CA  ^A 

NT   OF   CIVIL.   EI4QINEX 
UEY.  CAUFORN1* 


TY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

DEf-  '-NT   OF   CIVIL.   ENGINEERING 

ORNIA 


CHEMISTRY  AND  CIVILIZATION 

LECTURES     DELIVERED 

UNDER  THE 

RICHABD  B.  WESTBROOK  FREE  LECTURESHIP  FOUNDATIONS 

AT  THE 
WAGNER  FREE   INSTITUTE   OP   SCIENCE 

PHILADELPHIA 


SEE  PAGE  38 


CHEMISTRY      AND 
CIVILIZATION 


BY 

ALLERTON  S.  CUSHMAN,  A.M.,  PH.D. 

Director,  Institute  of  industrial  Research,  Inc.,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C.,  Ex-Lieut. -Col.  Ordnance 
Department,  U.  S.  A. 


BOSTON 
RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

THE   GORHAM   PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY  RICHARD  G.  BADGER 
All  Rights  Reserved 

Engineering 
Library 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

MY  WIFE 


CAL-     : 


PREFACE 

attempt  to  present  in  a  few  brief  chapters  a  general 
•*•  view  of  all  that  chemistry  has  done,  is  doing1,  and  hopes 
to  accomplish  for  mankind  in  the  future,  has  been  no  easy 
task.  At  best  the  author  has  been  able  only  to  sketch  in 
the  high  lights  and  deep  shadows  of  the  pictures.  The  effort 
has  been  made  to  produce  at  least  a  readable  story  of 
chemistry,  that  may  hope  to  interest  even  those  who  have  not 
heretofore  given  attention  to  the  subject  as  it  affects  their 
own  lives.  In  spite  of  this  effort,  several  nonchemical  friends 
who  have  been  kind  enough  to  read  the  manuscript  or  pa- 
tient enough  to  attend  the  lectures  have  remarked:  "I  en- 
joyed it  very  much,  though  I  must  confess  I  did  not  under- 
stand a  great  deal  of  it."  If  the  writer  has  indeed  succeeded 
in  presenting  the  subject  in  a  manner  which  will  produce  en- 
joyment and  instruction  even  when  the  understanding  is  in- 
complete, surely  the  effort  has  not  been  entirely  in  vain. 

Much  of  the  subject  matter  discussed  has  been  given  be- 
fore, as  for  instance  by  Geoffrey  Martin  in  his  Triumphs 
and  Wonders  of  Modern  Chemistry,  and  by  Professor  Sir 
William  Tilden  in  his  Chemical  Discovery  and  Invention  in 
the  Twentieth  Century.  To  both  of  these  authors  the  writer 
is  much  indebted.  Perhaps  the  best  excuse  for  the  present 
volume  lies  in  the  fact  that  other  writers  have  not  been 
at  so  much  pains  to  link  up  the  present  and  future  of 
this  branch  of  science  with  its  historical  past.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  destiny  of  the  human  race  is  deeply 

5 


"3/H 

iv>  v  v  \y\\j 

6  Chemistry  ai?d  Civilization 

involved  with  the  history  and  future  developments  of 
chemistry,  and  yet  the  ordinarily  well  educated  or  well  in- 
formed person,  the  "man  in  the  street,"  has  been  wont  to  look 
upon  this  branch  of  study  as  a  species  of  necromancy,  at 
best  a  medley  of  evil  odors  or,  in  plain  Anglo-Saxon, 
"stinks,"  which  it  is  quite  outside  his  province  or  possibility 
of  understanding.  The  business  man  at  the  head  of  indus- 
trial operations  which  make  direct  use  of  the  marvels  of 
chemistry  is  too  often  heard  to  say :  "I  don't  know  anything 
about  chemistry  and  I  don't  want  to  know  anything  about 
it;  I  hire  chemists."  That  this  is  the  wrong  and  unpro- 
gressive  attitude  is  obvious,  just  as  much  as  though  a  farmer 
should  say:  "I  don't  know  anything  about  farming;  I  hire 
farmers."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  general  or  unspecialized 
study  of  chemistry  is  no  more  difficult  than  that  of  short- 
hand stenography  which  indeed  in  some  respects  it  resembles. 
Thousands  and  thousands  of  our  young  men  and  girls 
acquire  a  working  knowledge  of  stenography  every  year, 
even  if  comparatively  few  become  really  experts  in  their  line. 
Chemistry  as  a  study  enjoys  and  is  founded  on  one  of  the 
most  simple  and  exact  systems  of  symbolic  shorthand  ever 
devised  for  any  purpose,  for  it  is  at  one  and  the  same  time 
descriptive  and  mathematically  quantitative.  The  world 
needs  more  chemists  and  it  is  a  field  of  labor  and  reward 
in  which  there  is  no  reason  why  women  should  not  work 
•side  by  side  with  men. 

If  the  author  should  by  mean*,  of  this  volume  succeed  in 
attracting  more  young  people  to  the  study  of  this  fascinat- 
ing subject,  his  efforts  will  not  have  been  wasted. 

Washington,  D.  C., 
April,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  /  PAGE 

I.     CHEMISTRY  IN  THE  PAST  / 13 

Cosmic  chemistry.  T^  he  cooling  of  the  worlds.  The  evolution 
of  organic  life.  Chemistry  of  the  life  processes.  Primordial  life 
forms  lay  the  foundation  of  modern  industries.  The  appearance 
of  man.  Discovery  and  use  of  fire.  The  birth  of  industry. 
Conservation  of  matter.  The  birth  of  chemistry  as  an  art.  The 
alchemists:  Hermes  Trismegistus  to  Paracelsus  and  Van  Hel- 
mont.  The  birth  of  chemistry  as  a  science.  Boyle  (1642-1727). 
The  phlogistonists:  Priestley,  Stahl,  Scheele,  Cavendish.  The 
influence  of  the  American  and  French  Revolutions.  Discovery  of 
dxygen,  of  nitrogen.  Lavoisier,  the  founder  of  modern  chemistry. 
Dalton  and  the  atomic  theory.  The  law  of  definite  proportions 
and  Prout's  Hypothesis.  Mendeleeffs  periodic  arrangement  of 

the  elements. 

I 

II.    CHEMISTRY  IN  THE  SERVICE  OF  MAN 33 

Chemistry  as  the  servant  of  man  emerges  from  the  American 
and  French  Revolutions.  Tlhe  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Some  early  history.  A  digression ;  episodes  in  the  life  of  Benjamin 
Thompson  (Count  Rumforid).  The  foundation  of  the  Royal 
Institution  of  Great  Britaiii.  The  birth  of  modern  research. 
Humphry  Davy.  Lord  Cavendish.  Michael  Faraday.  Liebig 
and  the  application  of  chemistry  to  agriculture.  Pasteur  and  the 
application  of  chemistry  to  fermentology,  biology,  pathology, 
and  medicine. 

III.     CHEMISTRY  AND  INDUSTRY 55 

Chemistry  pure  and  applied.  Application  of  chemistry  to  the 
basic  industries.  Birth  of  the  alkali  industry:  Leblanc  to  Solvay. 
Sulfuric  acid.  Iron  and  steel.  Bessemer  and  Siemens-Martin 
processes  revolutionize  the  iron  industry.  Ceramics.  Portland 
cement.  The  discovery  of  benzene.  Kekule  and  the  benzene 
ring.  Coal  tar  dyes  and  medicinals.  Synthetic  chemistry: 
indigo,  camphor,  rubber.  Catalysis. 


I 


&  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IV.    CHEMISTRY  AND  WAR 76 

Chemistry  and  the  world's  food  problem.  Nitrogen  fixation. 
Hydrocarbons  and  the  coal  tar  industry.  Poison  gases;  charcoal 
and  the  gas  mask.  Chemical  developments  in  military  surgery. 
The  war  and  agricultural  chemistry:  phosphates,  potash. 

V.     CHEMISTRY  AND  THE  FUTURE 100 

Radium  and  radiography.  Chemistry  and  the  invisible  spec- 
trum. The  Einstein  theory  and  iits  bearing  on  Chemistry. 

VI.    SOME  MODERN  ASPECTS  OF  CHEMISTRY Ill 

Colloids  and  dispersoids.  Chemistry  and  its  by-products. 
The  future  of  alcohol.  Chemistry  at  high  and  low  temperatures 
and  pressures.  The  liquefication  of  gases.  The  story  of  Helium. 
The  electric  arc  furnace  and  its  products.  The  jcrackiug  of 
petroleum  and  the  motor  fuel  problem.  The  promise  of  the 
future  as  compared  with  the  past. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  PAGE 

HENRY  CAVENDISH Frontispiece 

ROBERT  BOYLE 20 

JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY  BY    STUART 22 

BENJAMIN  THOMPSON,  COUNT  RUMFORD       . .     .  84 

MICHAEL  FARADAY  WASHING  APPARATUS  FOR  SIR  HUMPHREY  DAVY    .  48 

Louis  PASTEUR             .           .           56 


CHEMISTRY  AND  CIVILIZATION 


CHEMISTRY 
AND  CIVILIZATION 

CHAPTER    I 

CHEMISTRY  IN  THE  PAST 

A  GES  before  Man  appeared  on  this  planet,  chemistry 
•^^•was  at  work  preparing  a  suitable  environment  for  his 
reception.  Indeed,  the  clashing  atoms  were  deforming  and 
reforming  their  combinations  through  countless  eons  before 
any  living  thing  appeared  to  take  cognizance  of  the  great 
cosmic  drama.  Then  at  some  dim  time  in  the  cooling  process 
of  the  world's  formation,  the  miracle  of  miracles  occurredj 
a  lowly  organic  germ  or  group  of  germs  came  into  being. 
Undoubtedly  these  primordial  cells  grew,  divided,  multiplied 
and  differentiated,  and  the  chemistry  of  the  life  process  was 
staged  with  all  the  triumphs  and  marvels  which  were  to 
come.  A  great  evolutionist  has  said  that  given  the  begin- 
ning of  the  lowliest  cell  of  living  protoplasm,  Man  was 
the  inevitable  predestined  result.  Darwin  says  in  the  Origm 
of  Species  "I  should  infer  from  analogy  that  probably 
all  the  organic  beings  which  have  ever  lived  on  this  earth 
have  descended  from  some  one  primordial  form,  into  which 
life  was  first  breathed."  Later  Whitney  and  Wadsworth  * 

1  The  Azoic  System,  p.  546. 

13 


14?  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

state:  "It  is  now  clearly  established  that  there  was  a  time 
when  life  was  represented  by  a  few  forms,  which  were 
essentially  the  same  all  over  the  globe."  It  is  not  generally 
realized  that  the  chemical  processes  that  brought  these 
primordial  forms  into  being  and  made  possible  their  evolu- 
tion were  laying  the  foundation  stones  on  which  the  civiliza- 
tion and  industry  of  man  is  builded.  Let  us  pursue  this 
line  of  thought  for  a  moment.  Countless  myriads  of  lowly 
calcareous  animalculse  lived,  absorbed  their  increment  of 
lime  from  primitive  sea  waters,  died  and  shed  their  shells 
throughout  long  geological  periods  to  form  the  great  lime- 
stone strata  of  the  earth's  crust.  With  limestone  man  smelts 
iron  and  the  other  metals,  and  with  the  metals  he  harnesses 
the  energy  of  steam  and  electricity.  From  the  casts  of 
these  primeval  forms  man  makes  Portland  cement  which 
enables  him  to  mould  his  building  stone  in  the  place  he 
wants  it,  so  that  in  a  few  hours  it  attains  the  same  condition 
of  solidity  and  durability  as  the  rocks  Nature  took  a  mil- 
lion years  in  the  making.  With  limestone  man  fixes  the 
nitrogen  of  the  air  and  therewith  provides  the  food  for  his 
crops  that  in  turn  must  feed  him  throughout  all  time  to 
come.  On  limestone  man  founds  his  great  alkali  industry 
which  in  turn  makes  possible  the  manufacture  of  glass, 
textiles,  soap,  and  above  all  paper  without  which  the  art  of 
printing  and  our  entire  system  of  education  would  never 
have  become  possible. 

Contemporarily  with  the  animalculae,  the  primeval  forests 
flourished  and  decayed  so  that  eventually  the  coal  measures 
were  laid  down.  No  living  creature  in  the  scale  from  the 
diatom  to  the  dinosaur  was  ever  interested  in  coal,  but  one 
day  an  animal  shaped  like  a  man  discovered  fire;  industrial 
chemistry  began  on  that  day.  Prehistoric  man  practiced 


Chemistry  m  the  Past 


15 


the  arts  of  ceramics  and  metallurgy,  and  none  are  more 
dependent  on  obscure  chemical  actions  and  reactions.2 

Geoffrey  Martin  3  in  his  interesting  work  on  The  Tri- 
umphs of  Modern  Chemistry  introduces  his  subject  as  fol- 
lows: 

The  endless  circulation  of  matter  in  the  universe  is  per- 
haps one  of  the  most  wonderful  facts  with  which  chemistry 
has  to  deal.  It  is  this  endless  change  which  causes  the  his- 
tory of  the  most  common  and  insignificant  objects  about  us 
to  be  more  astonishing  than  any  fairy  tale.  What  a  won- 

a  In  order  to  lighten  the  somewhat  profound  phase  of  the  subject 
under  discussion,  I  venture  to  follow  the  example  of  Prof.  Sir  William 
Tilden  by  quoting  the  witty  and  humorous  lines  of  Constance  Naden 
whose  untimely  death  in  1889  deprived  science  of  an  eminent  woman 
worker. 


"We  were  a  soft  Amoeba 

In  ages  past  and  gone, 
Ere  you  were  Queen  of  Sheba 

And   I    King   Solomon. 

Unorganed,    undivided, 
We  lived  in  happy  sloth, 

And  all  that  you  did  I  did, 
One  dinner  nourished  both: 

Till  you  incurred  the  odium 
Of  fission  and  divorce — 

A  severed  pseudopodium 
You  strayed  your  lonely  course. 

When    next   we   met    together 

Our  cycles   to    fulfil, 
Each  was  a  bag  of  leather, 

With  stomach  and  with  gill. 

But  our  Ascidian  morals 
Recalled  that  old  mischance, 

And  we  avoided  quarrels 
By  separate  maintenance. 


We  roamed  by  groves  of  coral, 
We  watched  the  youngsters  play, 

The  memory  and  the  moral 
Had  vanished  quite  away. 

Next  each  became  a  reptile, 
With  fangs  to  sting  and  slay: 

No  wiser  ever  crept,  I'll 
Assert,  deny  who  may. 

But  now,  disdaining  trammels 
Of  scale  and  limbless  coil, 

Through  every  grade  of  mammals 
We  passed  with  upward  toil. 

Till  anthropoid  and  wary 
Appeared  the  parent   ape, 

And  soon  we  grew  less  hairy, 
And  soon  began  to  drape. 

So  from  that  soft  Amoeba 

In  ages  past  and  gone, 
You've  grown  the  Queen  of  Sheba, 

And  I,  King  Solomon." 


(A     Modern    Apostle.      Kegan 
Paul,  Trench  and  Co.,  1887.) 


Long  ages  passed — our  wishes 

Were   fetterless   and   free, 
For  we  were  jolly  fishes 

A-swimming  in  the  sea. 

3  Triumphs  and  Wonders  of  Modern  Chemistry.    Van  Nostrand  &  Co., 
1911. 


16  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

derful  story  could  be  told,  for  example,  of  the  material  which 
forms  our  bodies !  It  came  into  existence  in  the  immense 
depths  of  space  millions  upon  millions  of  years  ago,  and 
reached  our  earth.  Perhaps  it  fell  upon  the  earth  in  a 
fiery  meteorite,  or  perhaps  it  merely  joined  the  huge  fire 
mist  from  which  our  solid  earth  condensed.  Since  then  it 
has  run  round  age  after  age  in  an  endless  circle  of  change. 
First  it  formed  part  of  that  vast  primeval  atmosphere  which 
surrounded  the  globe,  and  blew  in  mighty  winds  around  our 
planet;  then  it  was  absorbed  into  the  body  of  some  humble 
living  being,  and  when  this  being  died  and  its  body  decayed, 
the  matter  passed  into  the  rich  mother  earth.  Thence  it 
passed  into  some  plant  by  means  of  its  roots ;  and  from  the 
plant  it  passed  by  being  devoured  into  the  body  of  some 
animal;  and  from  the  animal  again  it  passed  to  earth  and 
thence  to  plants  and  animals  again;  and  so  on  through  an 
endless  cycle  of  change,  coursing  through  the  bodies  of  in- 
numerable multitudes  of  living  forms,  which  stretch  far  back 
in  a  dim  unending  vista  into  the  depths  of  time.  Finally  it 
reached  man;  yes  the  very  atoms  which  thrill  and  flash  in 
our  brains  and  muscles  once  formed  part  of  a  living  plant  or 
animal  millions  of  years  ago,  and  will  again  form  part  of  a 
living  plant  or  animal  millions  of  years  hence.  In  some 
form  or  other  the  matter  which  now  forms  our  bodies  will 
exist  long  after  the  whole  present  order  of  creation  has 
passed  away;  indeed  it  may  well  yet  blow  in  the  winds  of 
worlds  as  yet  unborn  and  thrill  in  forms  of  life  not  yet 
evolved. 

As  Hamlet  pessimistically  soliloquizes : 

To  what  base  uses  we  may  return,  Horatio ! 

Why  may  not  imagination  trace  the  noble  dust  of  Alexander 
till  he  find  it  stopping  a  bung  hole? 

Alexander  died,  Alexander  was  buried, 

Alexander  returneth  into  dust:  the  dust  is  earth;  of  earth 
we  make  loam;  and  why  of  that  loam,  whereto  he  was 
converted,  might  they  not  stop  a  beer  barrel? 

Imperious  Caesar,  dead  and  turned  to  clay, 

Might  stop  a  hole  to  keep  the  wind  away. 


Chemistry  m  the  Past  17 

All  this  is  transcendental  chemistry^  if  you  please,  though 
no  one  can  deny  its  literal  truth.  In  the  light  of  very  modern 
research  connected  with  the  discovery  of  radium,  it  may 
well  be  doubted  if  matter  is  as  really  indestructible  as  the 
so-called  law  of  conservation  provides  for,  but  whatever 
new  discoveries  the  future  may  have  in  store,  there  can 
be  little  doubt  of  the  essential  immortality  of  matter.  In 
other  words,  the  atom,  the  unit  of  matter,  may  change,  but  it 
cannot  be  put  out  of  existence. 

No  review  of  the  history  of  chemistry,  however  brief,  is 
complete  without  some  reference  to  the  alchemists  «»?-d 
dreamers  who  kept  chemistry  alive  through  the  dark  ages. 
An  early  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Brittanica  spoke  of 
alchemy  as  the  sickly  but  imaginative  infancy  through  which 
modern  chemistry  had  to  pass  before  it  attained  its  major- 
ity, or,  in  other  words,  became  a  positive  Science.  Such  a 
definition  does  not,  however,  do  justice  to  the  subject,  for 
although  alchemy  in  the  popular  and  narrow  sense  was 
mainly  concerned  with  the  vain  attempts  to  transmute  base 
metals  into  gold,  there  was  a  deeper  if  not  an  esoteric  sig- 
nificance connected  with  this  philosophy.  In  the  words  of 
Liebig,  one  of  the  great  founders  of  modern  chemical  re- 
search, alchemy  was  never  at  any  time  anything  different 
from  chemistry.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  wealth  of  interest- 
ing tradition  and  legend  connected  with  and  built  about  the 
early  origin  of  the  art.  Alchemy  is  spoken  of  by  the  earliest 
writers  as  the  Egyptian  art  or  black  magic,  and  it  has 
been  supposed  by  some  etymologists  to  have  derived  its  name 
from  the  word  khem,  the  hieroglyphical  designation  for  the 
black  earth  or  soil  of  Egypt.  However  this  may  be,  the 
prefix  al  which  was  later  dropped  is  of  Arabian  origin  and 
reminds  us  that  the  Arabs  were  from  the  earliest  beginnings 
up  to  the  time  of  the  Moorish  conquest  of  Europe  active 


18  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

contributors  to  the  art  and  science  of  chemistry  which 
was  frowned  upon  by  the  Christian  dispensation  practically 
to  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the  fall  of  the 
temporal  and  ecumenical  power  of  the  Church. 

A  mystic  legend  handed  down  by  Zosimus  of  Panopolis, 
an  early  alchemical  writer  of  the  Third  Century,  relates 
the  strange  story  that  the  sons  of  god  who  took  unto  them- 
selves wives  of  the  daughters  of  men  as  set  forth  in  the  Vlth 
Chapter  of  Genesis,  taught  the  art  to  the  women  and  re- 
corded the  teaching  in  a  book  called  Chema.  This  story  is 
repeated  in  the  book  of  Enoch,  and  Tertullion  the  earliest 
and  after  Augustine  the  greatest  of  the  ancient  Church 
writers,  has  much  to  say  about  the  fallen  angels  who  re- 
vealed to  men  the  esoteric  knowledge  of  precious  metals  and 
stones  and  the  power  of  herbs  and  drugs.  Another  tradi- 
tion has  it  that  alchemism  was  founded  by  the  god  Hermes 
Trismegistus  (Egyptian  Thoth)  the  master  of  those  who 
occupied  themselves  with  the  study  of  natural  science  which 
became,  especially  in  its  esoteric  aspect,  the  Hermetic  phi- 
losophy. To  this  day  chemists  describe  a  perfectly  air-tight 
vessel  as  "hermetically  sealed." 

Space  will  not  permit  a  detailed  history  of  alchemism, 
and  we  must  pass  on  to  the  real  matter  of  the  present 
subject,  the  birth  and  development  of  modern  chemistry. 
It  will  suffice  to  point  out  that  in  the  early  part  of 
the  Sixteenth  Century  Paracelsus,  though  apparently  a 
quack,  nevertheless  made  the  contribution  of  applying 
what  was  then  known  about  chemistry  to  the  preparation 
and  prescription  of  medicine.  J.  B.  Van  Helmont  who 
died  in  1644  was  the  last  of  the  celebrated  transmutationists, 
although  J.  Price,  an  Englishman,  as  late  as  1782  claimed 
to  have  succeeded  in  changing  mercury  into  gold,  but 
he  is  said  to  have  committed  suicide  when  a  public  demon- 


Chemistry  in  the  Past  19 

stration  resulted  in  failure.  We  shall  see  later  on,  however, 
that  the  transmutation  of  radium  into  helium  appears  to 
have  been  proved  by  twentieth  century  research,  so  that 
the  end  is  not  yet. 

Having  dealt  thus  briefly  with  the  alchemists,  we  must 
now  turn  our  attention  to  that  most  interesting  interim  in 
the  development  of  modern  chemistry  comprised  in  the  period 
of  the  Phlogistonists.  Robert  Boyle  (1627-1691)  was  the 
seventh  son  and  fourteenth  child  of  Richard  Boyle,  the  great 
Earl  of  Cork.  Educated  at  Eton  College,  and  on  the  con- 
tinent, this  young  scion  of  the  Irish  nobility  in  spite  of 
great  inheritances  in  landed  estates  in  Ireland  and  England 
early  turned  his  attention  to  study  and  scientific  research, 
and  soon  became  one  of  the  most  distinguished  natural 
philosophers  of  all  time.  Boyle  surrounded  himself  with 
a  band  of  scientific  inquirers  known  as  the  "Invisible  Col- 
lege," who  devoted  themselves  to  the  cultivation  of  the  new 
philosophy.  We  must  remember  that  we  are  now  speaking 
of  a  time  when  among  others  such  great  men  as  Isaac  New- 
ton (1642-1727),  Leibnitz  (1646-1716),  G.  E.  Stahl  (1660- 
1784),  and  Robert  Boyle  (1627-1691)  were  contemporary. 
These  philosophers  knew  that  the  earth  was  surrounded  by 
an  atmosphere  of  air  but  they  were  in  total  ignorance  of 
the  nature  of  this  air  or  of  its  principal  properties.  Oxygen 
and  nitrogen  had  not  been  discovered,  nor  were  there  any 
reasons  to  suspect  the  compound  nature  of  the  atmosphere. 
The  discovery  of  oxygen  was  not  to  come  until  1774,  as  we 
shall  presently  relate,  although,  curiously  enough,  the  more 
inert  and  difficultly  recognizable  nitrogen  was  isolated  by 
Rutherford  two  years  earlier.  It  was  known  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  however,  that  when  certain  bodies  were 
heated  or  calcined  in  the  presence  of  air,  they  lost  something, 
while  other  bodies  gained  something  in  substance  and  weight. 


20  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

For  instance,  if  we  calcine  a  volume  of  charcoal  powder,  it 
continues  to  lose  substance  until  it  practically  entirely  dis- 
appears. If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  calcine  a  mass  of  iron 
filings  it  increases  in  volume  and  weight,  and  changes  from 
the  metallic  condition  to  a  rouge.  If  we  calcine  zinc  filings, 
these  change  to  a  white  powder  with  an  increase  in  volume 
and  weight.  We  now  know  that  oxygen  joins  with  the  char- 
coal to  form  an  invisible  carbonic  oxide  gas,  and  with  the 
metals  named  to  form  solid,  non-volatile  oxides  or  calces. 
Today  all  this  is  comprehensible  to  an  intelligent  child,  but 
the  giant  intellects  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  com- 
pletely mystified.  It  is  astonishing  that  a  phenomenon  that^ 
came  to  be  so  simple  to  the  merest  tyro  of  an  eighteenth 
or  nineteenth  century  schoolboy  should  have  puzzled  such 
minds  as  those  of  Newton  or  Boyle;  Newton  who,  lacking 
mathematical  means  for  expressing  his  thoughts,  invented 
the  calculus,  that  difficult  branch  of  mathematics  that  has 
puzzled  and  befogged  the  minds  of  generations  of  schoolboys 
ever  since,  and  Boyle  who  deduced  the  laws  of  gases  for  all 
time  before  the  gases  themselves  were  discovered  or  isolated. 
If  a  body  on  being  heated  gained  in  weight  and  volume, 
what  was  more  natural  to  the  seventeenth  or  even  eighteenth 
century  mind  than  to  assume  that  some  substance  or  ma- 
terial having  negative  weight  or  buoyancy  was  driven  out 
of  it?  This  substance  was  called  phlogiston  from  the  Greek 
word  meaning  burnt.  The  violence  or  completeness  of  com- 
bustion was  proportional  to  the  amount  of  phlogiston  pres- 
ent. A  burned  metal  was  a  dephlogisticated  substance,  but 
it  could  be  phlogisticated  again  by  reheating  it  with  char- 
coal, which  was  therefore  supposed  to  be  rich  in  phlogiston. 
Oxygen  was  dephlogisticated  air  and  so  on  through  a  maze 
of  subtle  and  perplexing  definition  and  explanation.  George 
Ernst  Stahl  (1660-1734),  the  great  German  physician  to 


ROBERT   BOYLE 


Chemistry  m  the  Past  81 

the  then  -reigning  King  of  Prussia,  was  the  founder  and  the 
great  defender  of  the  phlogistic  school  of  chemical  philoso- 
phy, but  it  found  adherents  among  such  great  natural  phil- 
osophers as  Henry  Cavendish,  Black,  and  Priestley  in  Eng- 
land, Scheele,  the  famous  apothecary  of  Sweden,  and  many 
other  contemporaries  who  might  be  mentioned. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  all  this  time  a 
new  school  of  thought  was  not  forming.  Boyle  himself 
had  early  in  his  career  suggested  certain  experimental  in- 
quiries which  were  being  assiduously  developed  in  many 
parts  of  the  world,  and  it  was  not  long  before  the  debates 
between  the  phlogistonists  and  the  anti-phlogistonists  be- 
came as  vigorous  as  they  were  rancorous.  Joseph  Priestley 
(1733-1804),  famous  English  chemist  and  non-conformist 
minister,  was  a  bitter  champion  of  the  phlogistonists  and,  A 
through  he  isolated  oxygen  in  1774  by  heating  red  oxide 
of  mercury  in  a  sealed  glass  tube  by  means  of  a  burning  > 
glass,  he  insisted  that  this  gas  was  dephlogisticated  air.  He 
found  that  a  candle  burned  in  the  gas  with  extraordinary 
brilliance  and  that  living  mice  subjected  to  its  atmosphere 
exhibited  great  vigor.  Of  the  analogy  between  combustion 
and  respiration — both  true  phlogistic  processes  in  his  view — 
he  had  already  convinced  himself,  and  his  paper  before  the 
Royal  Society  On  Different  Kwds  of  Air  in  1772  showed 
that  living  plants  are  able  to  restore  air  that  is  vitiated 
by  being  breathed  or  by  having  candles  burned  in  it. 

Priestly  was  a  genius  and  may  be  forgiven  for  the  obsti- 
nacy and  narrow-mindedness  of  his  views.  We  are  now  ap- 
proaching the  time  of  the  American  and  French  Revolutions, 
and  many  wonderful  changes  for  the  human  race  were 
developing.  The  sun  of  the  phlogistonists  was  setting,  and 
Lavoisier,  the  great  Frenchman  whose  head  fell  under  the 
guillotine  in  the  days  of  the  Terror,  Lavoisier,  the  real 


22  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

father  and  founder  of  modern  quantitative  chemistry,  in  that 
wonderful  year  1776  isolated,  described,  weighed,  and  named 
oxygen  gas.  To  quote  Lavoisier: 

Chemists  have  turned  phlogiston  into  a  vague  principle, 
which  consequently  adapts  itself  to  all  the  explanations  for 
which  it  may  be  required.  Sometimes  this  principle  has 
weight  and  sometimes  it  has  not ;  sometimes  it  is  free  fire 
and  sometimes  it  is  fire  combined  with  the  earthy  element, 
sometimes  it  passes  through  the  pores  of  vessels  and  some- 
times these  are  impervious  to  it;  it  explains  both  causticity 
and  noncausticity,  transparency  and  opacity,  colours  and 
their  absence;  it  is  a  veritable  Proteus  changing  in  form  at 
each  instant. 

The  great  Priestley,  embittered  by  debate  and  disagree- 
ment with  his  contemporaries,  emigrated  to  America  in  1794< 
and  settled  at  Northumberland,  Pennsylvania,  and  there  he 
died  ten  years  later,  still  an  incorrigible  phlogistonist.  As 
late  as  1800  he  wrote  to  a  friend:  "I  have  well  considered 
all  that  my  opponents  have  advanced,  and  feel  perfectly 
confident  of  the  ground  I  stand  upon.  Though  nearly 
alone,  I  am  under  no  apprehension  of  defeat."  Thus  passed 
into  the  limbo  of  rejected  things  one  of  the  most  fantastic 
working  theories  that  has  ever  engaged  the  attention  of 
scientific  men  for  two  whole  centuries. 

The  American  Revolution  is  behind  us,  and  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  that  great  charter  of  the  rights  of 
man,  has  been  written.  The  French  Revolution  is  about  to 
burst  upon  the  world  and  upset  almost  every  human  system 
theretofore  considered  solid.  A  new  system  of  weights  and 
measures,  a  new  machinery  of  science  makes  a  sudden  entry 
onto  the  stage.  The  immortal  Lavoisier  has  overthrown 
phlogiston  and  taught  science  to  weigh  and  measure.  As 
Liebig  later  wrote  of  him : 

He  discovered  no  new  body,  no  new  property,  no  natural 


JOSEPH    PRIESTLEY   BY    STUART 


Chemistry  m  the  Past  23 

phenomenon  previously  unknown ;  all  the  facts  established  by 
him  were  the  necessary  consequences  of  the  labours  of  those 
who  preceded  him.  His  merit,  his  immortal  glory,  consists 
in  this — that  he  infused  into  the  body  of  science  a  new  spirit ; 
but  all  the  members  of  that  body  were  already  in  existence, 
and  rightly  joined  together. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  chemistry 
entered  into  the  service  of  man  as  an  exact  quantitative 
science  and  as  a  working  adjunct  of  industry.  In  1808 
John  Dalton,  the  Englishman,  revived  the  atomic  theory 
of  the  early  Greek  and  Roman  philosophers,  gave  to  it  ac- 
curate quantitative  value,  and  solved  in  great  measure  the 
laws  of  chemical  combination.  Dalton  announced  that  mat- 
ter was  composed  of  atoms  which  combined  in  definite  pro- 
portions to  form  molecules.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a 
new  system  of  chemical  philosophy  which  is  the  basis  of  the 
science  of  modern  chemistry  which  we  shall  consider  more  in 
detail  in  subsequent  pages. 

The  value  of  Dalton's  generalizations  cannot  be  over- 
estimated, and  after  their  publication  in  1808  great  con- 
tributions to  exact  knowledge  followed  in  rapid  succession. 
Amongst  these  may  be  mentioned  Gay-Lussac's  observations 
that  gases  always  combine  in  simple  ratios.  For  example, 
one  volume  of  oxygen  gas  combines  with  two  volumes  of 
hydrogen  to  form  not  three  but  two  volumes  of  steam.  One 
volume  of  nitrogen  combines  with  three  volumes  of  hydrogen 
to  form  not  four  but  two  volumes  of  ammonia  gas.  The 
immediate  inference  was  that  the  Daltonian  atom  must  have 
parts  which  enter  into  combination  with  parts  of  other 
atoms.  In  other  words,  this  means  that  nearly  all  the  com- 
mon gases  are  composed  of  molecules  consisting  of  two 
atoms  linked  or  held  together  by  some  mysterious  and  still 
unknown  affinity  which  affinity  is,  however,  under  certain 


24  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

conditions  overcome,  permitting  combination  with  other 
atoms.  Boyle  had  previously  shown  that  for  all  practical 
purposes  equal  changes  in  pressure  and  temperature  always 
occasion  equal  changes  in  volume  of  all  gases.  Putting  this 
law  together  with  Gay-Lussac's  discovery,  Avagodro,  an 
Italian  philosopher,  deduced  the  wonderful  law  that  equal 
volumes  of  all  gases  at  the  same  temperature  and  pressure 
contain  exactly  the  same  number  of  molecules.  Although 
to  the  layman  this  may  not  mean  much,  it  is  nevertheless  a 
law  on  which  hangs  many  of  the  wonderful  deductions  and 
developments  of  science.  In  1860  there  prevailed  such  a 
confusion  of  hypotheses  as  to  atoms  and  molecules  that  an 
international  scientific  conference  was  held  at  Karlsruhe  to 
discuss  the  question.  This  conference  brought  about  the 
extension  of  Avogadro's  theory  to  all  substances  and  per- 
mitted the  deduction  of  the  atomic  weight  or  combining 
weight  of  a  non-gasifiable  element  from  the  densities  of  its 
gasifiable  compounds. 

From  that  day  to  this,  chemical  philosophy  holds  that  all 
the  matter  of  the  universe  is  made  up  of  the  atoms  of  some 
eighty  to  ninety  elements  which  can  combine  together  in 
definite  proportions  by  weight  to  form  molecules.  Hence 
every  element  has  a  definite  combining  or  atomic  weight 
which  is  constant  and  characteristic  of  each  element.  More- 
over, with  a  few  exceptions,  all  of  these  elements  that  are 
capable  of  existing  as  free  gases  are  composed  of  double 
atoms  linked  or  held  together  to  form  fixed  molecules  which 
can  only  be  torn  apart  into  constituent  atoms  by  the  ex- 
penditure or  release  of  energy.  A  compound  molecule  such 
as,  for  example,  sulfuric  acid  (H2SO4)  is  composed  of  two 
atoms  of  hydrogen,  one  of  sulfur,  and  four  of  oxygen. 
These  atoms  are  not  held  together  by  chemical  affinity  in 
a  helter  skelter  or  haphazard  fashion,  as  glass  beads  would 


00 

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tcduojuuddu 
25 


TY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

DEP/.KTMENT  OF  CIVIL.   ENGINEERING 
BERKELEY.  CALIFORNIA 


26  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

arrange  themselves  in  a  pill  box,  but  have  a  definite  linkage. 
We  may  liken  chemical  affinity  to  the  gravity  linkage  of 
the  solar  system.  Geoffrey  Martin  4  presents  this  idea  as 
follows : 

Let  us  consider  a  system  like  the  earth  and  moon.  Here 
the  moon  revolves  around  the  earth  and  accompanies  it  on 
its  journey  through  space.  The  moon  is  thus  linked  up  to 
the  earth,  and  a  chemist  would  express  this  relationship  by  a 
"constitutional  formula"  like  this :  M-E,  where  E  stands  for 
the  earth  and  M  for  the  moon.  Now,  is  this  not  exactly 
analogous  to  the  constitutional  formula  of  a  simple  mole- 
cule like  that  of  hydrochloric  acid  or  copper  oxide  which 
are  expressed  by  the  formulae  H-C1  and  Cu-O.  The  band 
or  link  joining  the  two  atoms  has  here  the  meaning  that  the 
one  atom  accompanies  the  other  on  its  journey  through 
space,  each  atom  probably  revolving  one  about  the  other 
in  the  same  way  that  the  moon  revolves  about  the  earth. 
Now,  let  us  take  a  somewhat  more  complicated  system,  such 
as  that  of  earth,  moon  and  sun.  Here  the  earth  revolves 
around  the  sun  and  the  moon  around  the  earth.  The  earth 
is,  so  to  speak,  connected  or  linked  to  the  sun,  and  the  moon 
to  the  ea<rth.  Hence  we  could  pluck  away  the  moon  from 
the  whole  system  without  removing  the  earth,  but  if  we 
plucked  away  the  earth,  the  moon  would  be  removed  with  it. 

Now,  this  is  what  we  find  in  the  case  of  the  sulphuric  acid 
molecule,  for  the  hydrogen  atoms  can  be  removed  without 
removing  the  oxygen  atoms,  but  the  oxygen  atoms  cannot 
be  removed  without  removing  hydrogen  atoms  with  them. 

Just  as  we  removed  in  succession  the  moon  and 
the  earth  from  the  sun,  so  chemists  remove  in  succession 
the  different  atoms  of  the  molecule  in  order  to  elucidate  their 
constitution.  The  agents  which  they  employ  for  picking  off 
the  atoms  are  collisions  with  different  sorts  of  mole- 
cules. 
4Loc.  cit.,  p.  71. 


Chemistry  m  the  Past  87 

Following  this  line  of  interesting  though  somewhat  rough 
analogy,  we  must  consider  the  sulphuric  acid  molecule  as  a 
sort  of  solar  system  in  miniature.  It  would  appear  that 
there  must  be  a  central  sulfur  atom  corresponding  to  the 
sun,  around  which  all  the  other  atoms  rotate.  Next  come 
two  oxygen  atoms  revolving  one  about  the  other  like  double 
stars  and  the  pair  rotating  about  the  central  sulfur  atom, 
this  combination  being  written  SO2  or  S<°.  Outside 
these  come  two  oxygen  atoms  to  each  of  which  a  satellite 
or  moon  in  the  shape  of  a  hydrogen  atom  is  provided.  The 
author  has  included  the  above  analogy  at  this  place  in  order 
to  show  how  the  mind  of  the  chemist,  once  furnished  with 
the  concepts  worked  out  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  occupied  itself  in  the  elucidation  of  the  invisible 
constitution  of  matter.  There  will  be  more  to  say  about  this 
phase  of  our  subject  later  on. 

It  will  now  be  necessary  to  indulge  in  another  analogy  in 
order  to  make  clear  some  of  the  great  generalizations  which 
were  built  up  around  the  chemical  discoveries  of  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  pianoforte  keyboard 
is  made  up  of  eighty-eight  notes  which  have  a  periodic  rela- 
tionship to  each  other  and  which  divide  into  octaves.  Groups 
of  these  notes  have  an  affinity  for  one  another  and  when 
sounded  together  produce  chords  and  harmonies.  When 
sounded  in  other  groups,  there  is  no  blending  or  combination, 
and  discords  result.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that 
all  the  matter  of  the  visible  universe  is  made  up  of  some 
eighty-odd  elements  consisting  of  atoms  of  definite  and  char- 
acteristic atomic  or  combining  weight.  It  has  also  been 
shown  that  when  brought  together  in  certain  groupings 
these  atoms  combine  to  form  molecules,  whereas  in  other 
groupings  no  combination  is  possible.  The  molecules  may 


88  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

therefore  be  roughly  compared  to  the  chords  or  harmonies  of 
the  tonal  scale. 

John  Alexander  Newlands  (1838-1898)  was  certainly  one 
of  the  first,  if  not  the  very  first,  of  the  nineteenth  century 
chemical  philosophers  to  note  the  periodicity  of  the  chemical 
elements.  In  1864  he  showed  that  if  the  elements  are  ar- 
ranged in  the  order  of  ascending  atomic  weights,  those 
having  consecutive  numbers  frequently  belong  to  the  same 
group  as  far  as  properties  are  concerned,  or  they  occupy 
similar  positions  in  different  groups,  and  he  pointed  out 
that  each  eighth  element  starting  from  a  given  one  is  a  sort 
of  repetition  of  the  first,  like  the  eighth  note  of  the  musical 
octave.  Newlands  Law  of  Octaves  as  he  enunciated  it  was 
at  first  ignored  or  treated  with  ridicule,  as  too  fantastic 
for  serious  consideration. 

It  remained  for  the  great  chemists,  Lothar  Myer  in  Ger- 
many and  MendeleefF  in  Russia,  about  1869,  to  arrange 
and  make  respectable  the  periodic  system  of  the  elements 
which  is  now  used  as  the  working  basis  of  modern  chemical 
philosophy.5  Gaps  were  found  to  exist,  however,  and  Men- 
deleeff  was  able  to  predict  and  describe  in  advance  of  their 
discovery  the  appearance  and  the  properties  of  a  number 
of  these  unknown  elements  and  their  compounds.  Science 
later  on  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  these  predictions 
verified.  To  the  layman  this  seems  a  wonderful  perform- 
ance, more  marvelous  even  than  the  prediction  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  planet  Neptune  by  its  action  upon  Uranus  long 
before  its  actual  discovery.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  granting- 
that  the  theory  of  the  periodicity  of  the  elements  really 
expressed  a  great  natural  law,  MendeleefPs  bold  predic- 
tions were  a  hardly  more  astonishing  accomplishment  than 

"See  Mendeleefs  Periodic  Classification  of  the  Chemical  Ebment»t 
.  29. 


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30  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

an  expert  musician  calling  off  the  musical  notes  of  which 
any  given  chord  is  composed,  although  he  does  not  see  the 
notes  struck.  If  any  component  note  is  left  out,  the  musi- 
cian should  not  only  be  able  to  detect  its  absence  but  also 
to  describe  its  harmonic  quality. 

In  1815,  William  Prout  (1785-1850),  an  English  physi- 
cian and  chemist,  had  published  anonymously  a  paper  on  the 
relation  between  the  specific  gravities  of  bodies  in  their  gas- 
eous state  and  the  weights  of  their  atoms.  In  this  paper, 
Prout  calculated  that  the  atomic  weights  of  a  number  of 
the  elements  were  exact  multiples  of  that  of  hydrogen,  and 
he  suggested  that  the  protyle  of  the  ancient  Greek  philoso- 
phers is  realized  in  hydrogen  from  which  all  other  elements 
are  formed  by  condensation  or  grouping.  Prout's  hypothesis 
has  not  been  substantiated  by  careful  quantitative  investi- 
gation of  the  atomic  weights,  but  the  general  idea  of  the 
gradual  evolution  of  the  elements  from  some  primordial 
mother  element  continues  to  occupy  the  minds  of  the  more 
speculative  among  modern  thinkers.  Sir  William  Crookes 
returned  to  this  theory  about  1883  as  the  result  of  certain 
irreconcilable  quantitative  results  he  had  obtained  while  in- 
vestigating some  of  the  rarer  elements  and  which  led  him 
to  the  provisional  conclusion  that  the  so-called  elements  are 
in  reality  compound  molecules  produced  by  a  cyclic  evolu- 
tion from  an  original  stuff  or  "protyle."  Whatever  the 
future  may  have  in  store  for  us  in  information  as  to  the 
origin  of  matter,  we  may,  however,  feel  confident  that  ele- 
mentary atoms  as  we  know  them  are  to  all  practical  intents 
and  purposes  eternal  and  unchangeable,  veritable  constants 
of  nature,  the  building  blocks  of  the  universe. 

In  closing  this  chapter,  some  reference  should  be  made 
to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  marvellous  phenomena  of 
chemistry,  physics  and  astronomy  are  now  explained  by  a 


Chemistry  m  ihe  Past  31 

new  concept  of  the  Daltonian  atom.  We  have  seen  that  all 
matter  is  made  up  of  molecules  and  atoms  constantly  in 
motion,  obeying  orbital  laws  of  affinity  just  as  controlling 
and  compelling  on  their  plane  of  magnitude  as  the  move- 
ments of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  the  Cosmos.  The  work  of 
J.  J.  Thomsen,  the  eminent  English  physicist,  has  now  led 
to  the  belief  that  the  invisible  atoms  of  elementary  matter 
are  themselves  composed  or  made  up  of  a  great  number  of 
electrons  or  corpuscles  of  a  mass  of  about  one  one-thou- 
sandth of  that  of  the  hydrogen  atom.  This  view  presents 
the  Prout's  hypothesis  and  the  speculation  of  Crookes  and 
others  in  a  new  light,  and  explains  many  of  the  marvellous 
phenomena  of  the  old  as  well  as  the  new  chemistry.  The 
electrons  are  conceived  as  points  of  negative  electric  energy 
in  inconceivably  rapid  motion,  held  by  affinity  in  and  about 
an  electro-positive  nucleus  just  as  water  is  absorbed  in  a 
sponge.6 

In  considering  the  constitution  of  the  whole  visible  uni- 
verse, we  can  perceive  nothing  else  than  motion  and  affinity, 
and  back  of  and  controlling  these  a  great  inscrutable  initia- 
tive impulse.  The  suns,  planets  and  satellites  revolve  about 
each  other  with  orbital  precision  and  regularity,  guided  and 
constrained  by  the  unknown  affinity  we  call  gravity;  from 
these  motions  man  receives  the  concept  of  time  and  so 
measures  it.  The  heavenly  bodies  in  turn  are  made  up  of 
molecules  atid  these  of  atoms,  and  these  again  of  electrons, 
all  guided  and  controlled  by  the  laws  of  affinities  as  yet  un- 
known. Under  these  concepts,  matter  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  energy  made  manifest. 

a  Since  the  author's  manuscript  was  prepared  the  work  of  Irving 
Langmuir  has  shed  new  light  on  the  configuration  of  the  elections  in  the 
atomic  systems  and  brings  out  very  strongly  the  analogy  between  the 
arrangement  of  the  solar  and  the  atomic  structures. 


3£  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

Geoffrey  Martin  has  eloquently  referred  to  some  of  these 
aspects  of  chemistry.  Let  us  hear  him: 

Suppose  we  place  an  oxygen  atom  at  a  small  distance  from 
a  pair  of  hydrogen  atoms  and  let  us  imagine  that  the  atoms 
are  in  a  fit  condition  for  reacting  chemically.  These  atoms 
exert  mighty  chemical  forces  on  each  other  and  instantly 
begin  to  rush  together.  The  closer  they  get  the  more  power- 
ful become  the  attractive  forces  and  the  swifter  the  atoms 
fly  until  they  meet  with  an  immense  velocity,  usually  not 
directly  colliding  but  grazing  each  other  like  comets  grazing 
the  sun.  The  final  velocities  with  which  the  hydrogen  atoms 
meet  the  oxygen  atoms  are  often  over  four  miles  a  second. 
The  atoms  then  commence  to  revolve  one  round  the  other 
and  thus  a  molecule  of  water  is  born.  Of  course  the  im- 
pulse of  the  rush  carries  the  atoms  far  beyond  their  mean 
position  of  equilibrium,  and  consequently  violent  surgings 
backwards  and  forwards — like  the  swingings  of  a  pendulum 
— occur  in  the  tiny  new-born  molecular  system.  Since  mil- 
lions upon  millions  of  atoms  of  oxygen  thus  unite  simultan- 
eously in  this  way  with  twice  their  number  of  hydrogen 
atoms,  it  is  obvious  that  the  previously  slow-moving  mixture 
of  molecules  suddenly  becomes  converted  into  a  mass  of 
swiftly  moving  molecules.  .  .  .  The  whole  reaction  has  taken 
only  the  fraction  of  a  second  to  complete  itself.  Short  as 
this  time  is  to  us,  yet  it  represents  to  an  atom  an  eternity 
of  time  within  which  vast  multitudes  of  atomic  events  are 
capable  of  occurring,  of  slowly  growing  into  prominence, 
and  then  gradually  dying  out  again.  For  example,  we  can 
calculate  from  the  kinetic  theory  of  gases  that  within  a 
single  second  an  atom  of  hydrogen  would  have  ample  time 
to  revolve  three  million  million  times  about  an  atom  of 
oxygen  in  the  water  molecule.  Calling  familiarly  the  time 
of  revolution  an  "atomic  year"  we  see  that  a  single  second 
of  our  time  is  worth  three  billion  of  atomic  years.  So  that 
if  the  above  reaction  between  hydrogen  and  oxygen  gases 
took  only  the  one-thousandth  part  of  a  second  to  complete 
itself,  nevertheless  this  time  represents  a  vast  interval  of 
3000  million  atomic  years !  If  we,  for  the  sake  of  illustra- 


Chemistry  m  the  Past  33 

tion,  imagined  that  the  water  molecules  were  inhabited  and 
that  the  time  it  took  an  atom  of  hydrogen  to  revolve  around 
an  atom  of  oxygen  in  this  molecule  bore  to  these  inhabitants 
the  same  relationship  that  the  time  the  earth  takes  to  travel 
around  the  sun  bears  to  us,  the  atomic  inhabitants  would 
be  quite  unaware  of  the  molecular  catastrophe  proceeding 
so  swiftly  about  them.  The  stellar  heavens  above  us  may, 
for  all  we  know,  be  the  theatre  of  a  similar  swift  change 
which  may  complete  itself  in  a  few  billion  years.  Yet  so 
vast  is  this  period  of  time  that  the  changes  now  proceeding 
seem  immeasurably  slow  to  us.  In  the  eyes  of  a  being, 
however,  to  whom  a  billion  years  seem  but  a  second,  or  in 
whom  a  sense  of  time  is  non-existent,  the  whole  mighty  uni- 
verse might  appear  to  be  in  the  throes  of  a  swift  catastrophe 
which  completes  itself  instantly.  Man,  with  his  empires  and 
cities,  would,  to  such  a  being,  seem  but  a  momentary  ex- 
crescence, appearing  suddenly  in  the  never-ending  abyss 
of  time  and  then  vanishing  forever.  .  .  .  With  such  facts 
facing  us  on  every  side  it  is  madness  to  assert  tha»b  the  prog- 
ress of  Science  means  the  destruction  of  the  spirit  of  rever- 
ence and  of  wonder.  To  such  criticisms  Science  may  proudly 
reply  in  the  words  of  the  Earth-Spirit  of  Goethe's  Faust: 

"At  the  whirring  loom  of  Time  unawed, 
I  weave  the  living  garment  of  the  Lord." 

We  have  now  reviewed  some  few  of  the  more  salient  and 
interesting  points  connected  with  the  history  of  chemistry 
in  the  past  and  have  brought  our  subject  up  to  that  period 
in  which  chemistry  really  takes  its  place  in  the  service  of 
man.  In  the  next  chapter  we  shall,  however,  have  to  retrace 
our  steps  and  introduce  some  further  early  history  that 
bears,  though  indirectly,  in  a  most  interesting  manner  on 
the  development  of  our  subject. 


CHAPTER    II 

CHEMISTRY  IN  THE  SERVICE  OF  MAN 

THE  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century  witnessed  the 
dawn  of  what  is  properly  spoken  of  as  modern  civiliza- 
tion. In  a  welter  of  bloodshed  and  fratricidal  strife,  the 
great  revolutions  of  America  and  France  had  laid  down 
the  foundations  of  the  right  of  the  individual  to  life,  liberty 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  The  history  of  that  extraor- 
dinary epoch  rings  with  the  military  achievements  and  con- 
structive statesmanship  of  Washington  and  Bonaparte,  but 
behind  the  scenes  the  stage  was  being  set  for  a  scientific 
revolution,  the  results  of  which  were  to  affect  the  personal 
lives  and  methods  of  living  of  the  generations,  then  as  well 
as  even  yet,  unborn.  If  the  question  were  asked,  on  what 
one  influence  more  than  another  the  conditions  of  modern 
human  life  depend,  the  answer  would  immediately  be  forth- 
coming in  one  word — Energy.  This  is  perhaps  best  ex- 
emplified by  the  rapid  growth  in  recent  years  of  the  produc- 
tion of  coal.  With  a  population  of  a  hundred  million  in  the 
United  States  alone,  we  are  at  present  producing  and  using 
up  each  year  approximately  600,000,000  tons  of  coal,  and 
even  this  is  not  enough.  The  development  of  enormous  water 
powers  for  special  uses  in  peace  and  war  is  being  strenuously 
urged  and  the  problem  is  receiving  the  closest  attention  of 
the  engineering  professions  and  should  receive  that  of  the 
state  and  national  governments. 

34 


BEXJAMIK    THOMPSON,    COUNT   RUMFORD 


in  the  Service  of  Man  35 

I  shall  make  it  part  of  my  present  task  to  invite  attention 
to  a  brief  review  of  the  beginning  and  development  of  this 
modern  strenuous  age,  insofar  as  science  has  most  particu- 
larly affected  it.  It  is  an  entertaining  story  and  one  in 
which  we  should  be  particularly  interested,  inasmuch  as  the 
beginning  of  this  epoch  was  affected  by  an  event  that  took 
place  in  colonial  America. 

On  March  26, 1753,  there  was  born  on  a  farm  at  Woburn, 
in  the  vicinity  of  Boston,  a  poor  boy  who  was  destined  in 
later  years  and  after  a  most  adventurous  and  exciting  life 
to  be  the  means  of  starting  the  modern  application  of  science 
to  the  problems  of  industry  and  energy.  This  boy,  who  bore 
the  rather  unromantic  name  of  Benjamin  Thompson,  got  as 
much  schooling  and  no  more  than  was  current  among  New 
England  farm  lads  prior  to  the  Revolution,  but,  as  history 
shows,  genius  needs  but  little  schooling.  We  are  told  that 
at  fourteen,  Thompson  was  sufficiently  advanced  in  mathe- 
matics to  calculate  a  solar  eclipse  within  four  seconds  of 
accuracy,  and  we  may  well  ask  ourselves  how  many  school  or 
college  graduates  of  the  present  day  could  match  this  accom- 
plishment. From  the  romantic  story  of  Thompson's  life, 
we  learn  that  he  was  apprenticed  as  a  shop  boy  in  Salem 
at  the  early  age  of  thirteen,  and  became  a  store  clerk  in 
Boston  at  seventeen.  Popular  with  the  ladies  all  his  life 
long,  he  married  at  nineteen,  or,  as  he  put  it  himself,  he 
was  married  by  a  rich  and  well  connected  widow  of  thirty- 
five  whose  home  was  at  the  little  village  of  Rumford,  N.  H., 
now  called  Concord.  Though  not  a  happy  one  in  the  con- 
ventional sense,  this  marriage  was  the  foundation  of  Thomp- 
son's success  and  profoundly  affected  the  development  of 
civilization  under  modern  conditions,  as  we  shall  presently 
see.  Moving  with  his  wife  to  Rumford,  he  became  acquainted 
with  the  Royal  Governor  Wentworth  of  New  Hampshire, 


36  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

who  soon  succeeded  in  making  a  thorough  going  Tory  of 
his  fascinating  young  friend.  A  daughter  was  born  of  this 
marriage,  but  soon  after,  deserting  wife  and  child,  he  was 
obliged  to  flee  from  the  wrath  of  his  patriot  neighbors  and 
take  refuge  on  a  British  ship.  Armed  with  despatches  and 
letters  of  introduction  from  Governor  Wentworth,  Thomp- 
son made  his  way  to  London  where  with  his  usual  facility  he 
soon  ingratiated  himself  with  Lord  George  Germain,  Secre- 
tary of  State,  who  gave  him  an  under-secretaryship  and  folj 
lowed  this  up  with  promotion  after  promotion. 

In  the  meantime,  scientific  studies,  with  such  resources  as 
London  could  at  that  time  offer,  consumed  all  the  young 
man's  leisure  hours.  Scientific  monographs  on  such  timely 
subjects  as  the  explosive  force  of  gunpowder,  the  construc- 
tion of  firearms,  and  a  system  of  signalling  at  sea  caught  the 
attention  of  the  nation,  and  in  1779,  at  the  early  age  of 
twenty-six,  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
which  was  then,  as  now,  one  of  the  greatest  of  scientific 
honors.  Time  will  not  permit  us  to  follow  the  extraordinary 
adventures  and  triumphs  of  this  man's  life  from  this  period 
on.  With  a  few  more  brief  words,  we  must  hurry  over  to 
the  crowning  achievement  of  his  career. 

In  1783  he  crossed  to  the  continent,  a  fellow  passenger 
happening  to  be  Gibbon,  the  historian,  who  in  writing  home 
to  his  friend  Lord  Sheffield,  of  this  chance  meeting,  speaks 
perhaps  somewhat  ironically  of  his  travelling  acquaint- 
ance as  Secretary-Colonel-Admiral-Philosopher  Thompson. 
Reaching  Bavaria,  our  adventurer  presented  letters  to  the 
Elector  Maximilian  who,  in  turn  falling  a  victim  to  Thomp- 
son's fascination,  heaped  offices,  honors  and  authority  upon 
him.  During  the  eleven  years  he  resided  at  Munich,  he 
occupied  the  positions  of  Minister  of  War,  Minister  of 
Police,  and  Grand  Chamberlain.  His  scientific  studies  and 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man  37 

publications  were  prolific  and  marvellous,  and  he  was  the 
first  to  understand  and  elucidate  the  laws  of  heat.  He  put 
a  stop  to  the  brigandage  and  organized  beggary  that  was 
a  continual  menace  to  the  Bavarian  population.  Under  his 
orders,  twenty-six  hundred  mendicants  and  bandits  were 
arrested  on  one  day  alone,  placed  in  an  institution  where  they 
were  fed,  housed  and  clothed,  and  put  to  profitable  labor. 
Thompson  issued  a  public  statement  in  which  he  said:  "To 
make  vicious  and  abandoned  people  happy,  it  has  generally 
been  supposed  necessary  to  first  make  them  virtuous.  But 
why  not  reverse  this  order?  Why  not  first  make  them  happy 
and  then  virtuous?" 

All  this  time,  and  by  means  perhaps  of  applying  this  phi- 
losophy to  his  own  case,  Thompson  was  amassing  a  large 
personal  fortune.  In  1791  he  was  made  a  count  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire,  and  chose  the  title  Count  Rumford  from 
the  name  of  the  little  New  Hampshire  village  where  the  de- 
serted wife  and  daughter  still  lived. 

After  many  more  adventures,  Rumford  in  1799  returned 
to  London  to  found  and  endow  a  group  of  research  labora- 
tories and  lectureships  under  the  name  of  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion of  Great  Britain.  This  research  foundation,  the  first 
specific  organization  of  its  kind,  marked  *an  epoch  in  the 
effect  of  science  on  civilization,  as  we  shall  soon  see. 

About  that  time  a  young  man  named  Humphry  Davy  was 
earning  a  somewhat  precarious  living  as  a  more  or  less  itin- 
erant lecturer  and  investigator  of  such  topics  in  chemistry 
and  physics  as  were  current  in  those  days.  In  1799  he  had 
accidentally  discovered  nitrous  oxide  (laughing  gas)  and 
proved  its  anaesthetic  and  intoxicating  effects  when  inhaled. 
This  discovery  caught  the  popular  imagination,  and  in  a 
day  Humphry  Davy  was  famous.  The  gas  was  inhaled  by 
Southey  and  Coleridge  among  other  distinguished  persons, 


38  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

while  fashionable  London  society  made  it  a  ten  days' 
wonder.  Rumford  promptly  chose  the  recently  knighted 
Humphry  Davy  to  be  scientific  lecturer  and  director  of  his 
new  research  institution,  and  there  began  a  series  of  events, 
with  the  development  of  which  our  progress,  even  our  very 
lives,  are  to  this  day  intimately  connected. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  in  those  days  there  were 
many  scientific  facts  and  generalizations  on  the  very  brink 
of  discovery.  Undiscovered  laws  of  nature  were  almost 
beckoning  to  man  to  uncover  them.  As  an  analogy  of  what 
is  meant,  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  may  be  cited, 
The  early  pioneers  found  their  nuggets  near  the  surface  and 
more  or  less  easy  to  collect,  but  as  time  went  on  it  became 
more  and  more  difficult  to  unearth  the  gold,  so  that  it  be- 
came necessary  for  men  to  organize  into  companies  and  to 
operate  on  a  larger  scale  in  order  to  achieve  their  purpose 
with  success.  Humphry  Davy  and  his  co-workers  once  fur- 
nished by  the  genius  and  liberality  of  Count  Rumford  with 
the  facilities  and  tools  of  scientific  research,  began  a  series 
of  brilliant  discoveries  which  has  profoundly  affected  and 
changed  the  current  of  human  development  and  destiny. 
Before  we  can  follow  these  discoveries,  it  will  be  necessary 
to  go  back  a  little  and  inquire  into  the  status  of  scientific 
knowledge  just  previous  to  the  foundation  of  the  Royal 
Institution. 

It  is  interesting  in  passing  from  the  career  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  to  refer  to  the  fact  that  before  his  death  he  showed  his 
feeling  for  the  land  of  his  birth  by  establishing  the  Rum- 
ford  medal  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
and  by  endowing  the  Rumford  professorship  in  Harvard 
University.  Rumford  recived  appropriate  punishment  for 
his  desertion  of  his  American  wife,  for  in  his  later  years  he 
married  in  Paris  the  widow  of  the  great  Lavoisier.  With  this 


Chemistry  in  the  Service  of  Man  39 

strenuous  lady  he  led  a  stormy  life  and  on  one  occasion  we 
read  that  she  threw  him  downstairs  to  his  great  injury.  Rum- 
ford  died  suddenly  on  August  21,  1814,  in  the  sixty-second 
year  of  his  age,  having  accomplished  a  much  greater  con- 
tribution to  chemistry  in  the  service  of  man  than  has  ever 
been  very  generally  realized. 

We  have  already  noted  in  a  previous  chapter  the  work 
of  the  great  phologistonists  of  the  eighteenth  century.  We 
have  discussed  the  contributions  of  Priestley  in  England 
and  Scheele  in  Sweden,  the  co-discoverers  of  oxygen  gas 
which  remained  for  Lavoisier  to  recognize  and  describe  a 
few  years  later.  But  all  this  time  there  was  working  in  and 
about  London  an  unobtrusive,  somewhat  shabby  and  very 
eccentric  nobleman  whose  labors  and  accomplishments  form 
a  direct  connecting  link  between  the  first  beginnings  of  chem- 
istry and  some  of  the  great  industrial  accomplishments  of 
the  twentieth  century,  which  so  profoundly  affect  the  pres- 
ent and  the  future  destiny  of  humanity.  Lord  Henry  Cav- 
endish, of  the  famous  line  of  the  Dukes  of  Devonshire,  was 
born  in  1731  and  grew  up  to  be  reputed  one  of  the  richest 
men  in  England  or  of  his  time.  This  extraordinary  person- 
age did  not  in  the  remotest  degree  resemble  in  his  tastes 
and  habits  the  other  rich  gentlemen  of  his  day,  although 
Robert  Boyle  of  the  line  of  the  Earls  of  Cork  had  already 
set  a  distinguished  example  for  future  scions  of  the  nobility 
to  emulate.  Cavendish  held  little  intercourse  with  his  fel- 
lows, and  we  are  told  that  his  chief  object  in  life  seems 
to  have  been  to  avoid  social  attention.  After  his  publica- 
tions in  the  proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  had  already 
made  him  famous,  a  French  savant  crossed  the  Channel  to 
attend  a  soiree  of  the  Royal  Society,  with  the  express  pur- 
pose of  meeting  Cavendish  and  conversing  with  him  on 
scientific  subjects.  It  is  related  that  the  French  visitor 


40  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

arrived  at  the  rooms  rather  late,  and  as  he  mounted  the 
long  staircase  he  perceived  a  tall,  ungainly,  rathe'r  shabby 
gentleman  preceding  him.  The  guest  proffered  a  polite  re- 
quest that  the  great  Lord  Cavendish  be  pointed  out  to  him 
immediately  on  his  arrival  at  the  rooms.  He  was  some- 
what astonished  when  his  ungainly  companion  on  the  stair- 
case, without  a  word,  turned  around  and  beat  a  hasty  re- 
treat homeward.  It  was  Cavendish  himself,  whose  intense 
and  awkward  shyness  was  not  proof  against  the  eloquent 
compliments  of  the  visiting  Frenchman.  We  read  that  Cav- 
endish was  tall  and  thin,  his  dress  old-fashioned,  he  had  an 
impediment  in  his  speech,  and  his  air  of  timidity  and  reserve 
was  almost  ludicrous.  His  dinner  was  ordered  daily  by  a 
note  placed  on  the  hall  table  and  his  women  servants  were 
instructed  to  keep  out  of  his  sight  on  pain  of  dismissal. 
Naturally  Cavendish  never  married,  he  died  unattended  and 
alone,  in  1810,  preferring  not  to  call  for  assistance  from  his 
servants  even  when  he  felt  himself  expiring.  He  left  to  his 
legal  heir  over  one  million  pounds  sterling,  an  enormous 
fortune  for  that  day.  We  are  told  that  Cavendish  held 
portrait  painters  in  abhorrence  and  steadfastly  refused  to 
sit  for  his  portrait.  The  only  picture  extant  was  produced 
from  a  drawing  by  Alexander  from  furtive  sketches  made 
while  waylaying  the  philosopher  in  the  streets.1 

So  much  for  the  character  of  this  uncouth  philosopher 
whose  personality  and  career  formed  so  strange  a  contrast 
to  his  brilliant  contemporary  Count  Rumford.  Yet  the 

work  and  contributions  of  these  two  men  were  destined  to 

i 

exert  together  a  profound  influence  on  the  direction  and 
development  of  chemistry  applied  to  the  service  of  mankind. 
We  may  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  significant  researches 
which  have  put  humanity  under  a  debt  to  Henry  Cavendish 

1  Frontispiece. 


Chemistry  in  the  Service  of  Man  4»1 

for  all  time.  Although  a  phlogistonist  to  the  end  of  his  life, 
Cavendish  was  not  limited  or  bound  by  scientific  prejudice 
to  the  same  degree  as  was  Priestley ;  his  scientific  work  which 
was  voluminous  and  original  is  distinguished  for  the  wide- 
ness  of  its  range  and  for  its  extraordinary  exactness  and 
accuracy.  To  Cavendish  nitrogen  gas  was  phlogisticated 
while  oxygen  was  dephlogisticated  air.  Hydrogen  he  looked 
upon  as  phlogiston  itself.  In  this,  he  was,  of  course,  in 
error  and  it  is  the  more  extraordinary  that  in  spite  of  this 
handicap  of  ignorance  he  should  have  made  the  great  de- 
ductions and  discoveries  that  he  did. 

Starting  from  an  experiment  described  by  Priestley  in 
which  a  certain  John  Waltire  fired  a  mixture  of  common  air 
and  hydrogen  (inflammable  air)  by  means  of  an  electric 
spark  (which  we  may  interpolate  is  analogous  to  what  we  do 
today  in  an  internal  combustion  engine),  Cavendish  ar- 
ranged an  ingenious  piece  of  apparatus  into  which  he  could 
introduce  any  quantitative  mixtures  of  gases  which  he  de- 
sired, and  pass  through  them  a  succession  of  electric  sparks 
from  a  static  machine.  The  sparking  tube  was  closed  or 
sealed  at  the  bottom  by  immersion  in  a  liquid  which  was 
sometimes  mercury  or  again  any  watery  solution  that  might 
be  selected.  In  fact,  Cavendish's  first  apparatus  was  so 
simple  in  relation  to  the  great  discoveries  that  were  made 
with  it  that  it  seems  worthy  of  description.  The  appar- 
atus consisted  of  a  glass  tube  bent  into  the  form  of  an 
acute  angle  or  elbow,  and  two  wine  glasses.  The  arrange- 
ment was  as  follows : 

The  tube  A  having  been  filled  with  the  same  liquid  as  that 
contained  in  the  glasses  B  and  C,  air  or  any  desired  mixture 
of  gases  could  be  introduced  by  displacement  into  A  by 
means  of  a  little  hook  ended  delivery  tube.  The  wire  termi- 
nals from  the  static  machine  could  then  be  pushed  up  the 


Chemistry  and  Civilization 


Cavendish's  StTmple   Apparatus   in  Which  the   First  Nitrogen  Fixation 
Experiment  Was  Made 


open  tube  ends  in  B  and  C  and  brought  as  near  together 
as  desired.  If  any  condensation  of  the  atmospheres  in  A 
took  place  during  the  passage  of  the  electric  sparks,  the 
liquid  in  the  glasses  would  rise  in  the  arms  of  the  tube  and 
thus  furnish  a  quantitative  measure  of  the  amount  of  the 
condensation.  With  this  apparatus  Cavendish  proved  that 
water  was  composed  of  two  volumes  of  hydrogen  (inflamma- 
ble air  or  phlogiston)  united  with  one  volume  of  oxygen 
(dephlogisticated  air).  This  seems  simple  now  but  it  was 
marvellous  in  those  days  to  learn  that  common,  familiar 
water  was  composed  of  two  invisible  airs  or  gases,  combined 
in  a  definite  relation  by  weight  and  by  volume.  When  Cav- 
endish let  up  a  mixture  of  common  air  and  hydrogen  into 
his  tube,  he  found  that  invariably  nitrous  air  (nitric  oxide 
gas)  was  formed.  He  put  what  he  called  "soap  lees"  into 
his  wine  glasses,  and  noted  the  formation  of  nitre.  "Soap 
lees"  was  the  alkaline  solution  made  by  leeching  hardwood 
ashes  with  water  and  we  now  know  it  was  mainly  a  solution 


Chemistry  in  the  Service  of  Man  43 

of  potash.  The  next  step  was  to  introduce  common  air  into 
the  sparking  tube,  mixed  with  an  excess  of  oxygen  (dephlog- 
isticated  air).  When  no  more  condensation  took  place, 
the  soap  lees  were  examined  and  found  to  contain  a  definite 
quantity  of  nitre  (potassium  nitrate).  This  was  the  first 
recorded  observation  of  the  fixation  of  atmospheric  nitrogen, 
a  discovery  that  was  the  germ  of  the  solution  of  the  food 
problem  for  generations  of  men,  perhaps  even  of  civilizations, 
as  yet  unborn.  It  was  a  discovery  too  that  held  within  it 
the  germ  of  the  great  world  war  which  was  to  come  some- 
thing over  a  century  and  a  quarter  later.  The  Germans 
could  not  have  undertaken  a  world  war  if  modern  chemical 
engineering  had  not  developed  methods  of  oxidizing  or  fixing 
atmospheric  nitrogen  on  a  great  scale  of  operation.  But 
all  this  was  obscure  in  Cavendish's  day  and  was  to  remain 
more  or  less  dormant  like  a  seed  in  cold  earth  for  a  long 
time  to  come. 

We  have  time  only  to  refer  to  one  more  of  the  careful 
observations  of  Cavendish  which  was  to  lie  obscurely  hidden 
and  unnoted  for  one  hundred  years,  and  which  resulted 
finally  not  only  in  an  extraordinary  application  to  modern  in- 
dustry but  which  also  set  up  a  train  of  chemical  and  physical 
discovery  of  a  very  wonderful  nature,  the  end  of  which  is 
not  yet  in  sight.  In  1887  John  William  Strutt  (Lord  Ray- 
leigh)  accepted  the  post  of  professor  of  natural  philosophy 
at  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,  which  institu- 
tion was  founded,  as  we  have  learned,  in  the  year  1800  by 
Benjamin  Thompson  (Count  Rumford).  For  some  years 
previously,  Lord  Rayleigh  had  been  redetermining  the  vapor 
density  and  molecular  weight  of  nitrogen  by  weighing  the 
gas  in  large  glass  globes,  using  the  utmost  refinements  of 
modern  science  to  insure  the  most  minute  accuracy.  Some 
curious  inconsistencies  in  these  weights  were  encountered. 


44  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

Whenever  the  nitrogen  was  prepared  by  removing  oxygen 
and  all  known  impurities  from  air,  it  invariably  weighed  a 
little  more  than  pure  nitrogen  which  had  been  prepared  by 
heating  ammonium  nitrite.  For  a  long  time  Lord  Rayleigh 
suspected  that  these  discrepancies  were  due  to  his  own  faulty 
workmanship  and  he  has  recorded  that  at  one  time  he  be- 
came so  disgusted  with  himself  that  he  was  on  the  eve  of 
abandoning  the  research.  At  this  juncture,  however,  he  per- 
sonally related  his  difficulties  to  his  friend  and  colleague, 
Professor  (now  Sir)  James  Dewar,  Fullerian  Professor  of 
Chemistry  at  the  Royal  Institution.  The  present  writer 
visited  the  Royal  Institution  some  time  in  the  early  nineties, 
with  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Sir  James  Dewar  from  his 
friend,  Prof.  Josiah  Cook,  of  Harvard  University.  This  was 
at  the  very  time  these  interesting  discussions  were  going  on. 
According  to  the  writer's  recollection,  Lord  Rayleigh  had 
raised  the  point  as  to  what  evidence  really  existed  that  the 
air  after  removal  of  all  known  impurities  consisted  of  noth- 
ing more  than  oxygen  and  nitrogen.  He  pointed  out  that 
if  it  could  be  assumed  that  the  air  normally  contained  some 
small  quantity  of  an  unknown  inert  gas  heavier  than  nitro- 
gen, his  anomalous  weights  could  be  accounted  for.  To  the 
best  of  the  writer's  recollection,  Professor  Dewar  suggested 
that  though  such  an  assumption  was  improbable  it  was  by 
no  means  impossible,  since  if  such  an  unknown  gas  existed 
it  must  be  singularly  inert  to  have  escaped  the  many  search- 
ing investigations  which  had  been  made  on  the  constitution 
of  the  atmosphere.  It  was  then  proposed  to  refer  back  to 
Cavendish's  original  memoirs,  which  described  his  experi- 
ments on  the  composition  of  air. 

If  these  eminent  scientists  had  been  discussing  such  a  sub- 
ject somewhere  in  America,  it  is  probable  that  they  would 
have  had  to  go  a  journey  before  they  could  have  consulted 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man  45 

Cavendish's  original  papers.  In  this  case,  however,  thanks 
to  the  liberality  of  the  American  Benjamin  Thompson,  it 
was  but  a  step  to  the  next  room  where  not  only  Cavendish's 
publications  but  the  very  apparatus  which  he  had  used  were 
preserved.  In  his  memoirs  of  1795,  nearly  a  century  pre- 
viously, Cavendish  had  written: 

As  far  as  the  experiments  hitherto  published  extend,  we 
scarcely  know  more  of  the  phlogisticated  part  of  our  at- 
mosphere than  that  it  is  not  diminished  by  lime-water, 
caustic  alkalies,  or  nitrous  air;  that  it  is  unfit  to  support 
fire  or  maintain  life  in  animals ;  and  that  its  specific  gravity 
is  not  much  less  than  that  of  common  air;  so  that,  though 
the  nitrous  acid,  by  being  united  to  phlogiston,  is  converted 
into  air  possessed  of  these  properties,  and  consequently, 
though  it  was  reasonable  to  suppose,  that  part  at  least  of 
the  phlogisticated  air  of  the  atmosphere  consists  of  this 
acid  united  to  phlogiston,  yet  it  may  fairly  be  doubted 
whether  the  whole  is  of  this  kind,  or  whether  there  are  not 
in  reality  many  different  substances  confounded  together 
by  us  under  the  name  of  phlogisticated  air.  I  therefore 
made  an  experiment  to  determine  whether  the  whole  of  a 
given  portion  of  the  phlogisticated  air  of  the  atmosphere 
could  be  reduced  to  nitrous  acid,  or  whether  there  was  not 
a  part  of  a  different  nature  to  the  rest  which  would  refuse 
to  undergo  that  change.  The  foregoing  experiments  indeed, 
in  some  measure,  decided  this  point,  as  much  the  greatest 
part  of  air  let  up  into  the  tube  lost  its  elasticity;  yet,  as 
some  remained  unabsorbed,  it  did  not  appear  for  certain 
whether  that  was  of  the  same  nature  as  the  rest  or  not.  For 
this  purpose  I  diminished  a  similar  mixture  of  dephlogisti- 
cated  (oxygen)  and  common  air,  in  the  same  manner  as 
before  (by  sparks  over  alkali),  till  it  was  reduced  to  a  small 
part  of  its  original  bulk.  I  then,  in  order  to  decompound 
as  much  as  I  could  of  the  phlogisticated  air  (nitrogen) 
which  remained  in  the  tube,  added  some  dephlogisticated  air 
to  it  and  continued  the  spark  until  no  further  diminution 
took  place.  Having  by  these  means  condensed  as  much  as 


46  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

I  could  of  the  phlogisticated  air,  I  let  up  some  solution 
of  liver  of  sulphur  to  absorb  the  dephlogisticated  air;  after 
which  only  a  small  bubble  of  air  remained  unabsorbed,  which 
certainly  was  not  more  than  1/120  of  the  bulk  of  the  de- 
phlogisticated air  let  up  into  the  tube ;  so  that,  if  there  be  any 
part  of  the  dephlogisticated  air  of  our  atmosphere  which 
differs  from  the  rest,  and  cannot  be  reduced  to  nitrous  acid, 
we  may  safely  conclude  that  it  is  not  more  than  1/120  part 
of  the  whole. 

After  this  discovery,  Lord  Rayleigh  immediately  realized 
that  though  Cavendish  had  not  definitely  proved  the  exist- 
ence of  an  unknown  constituent,  it  was  highly  probable  that 
his  residue  was  really  of  a  different  kind  from  the  main  bulk 
of  the  "phlogisticated  air."  Sir  William  Ramsay,  professor 
of  chemistry  in  University  College,  London,  an  eminent  and 
ingenious  experimentalist,  was  invited  to  review  and  repeat 
Cavendish's  work,  with  the  result  that  in  1894  Rayleigh 
and  Ramsay  were  able  to  announce  to  the  British  Associa- 
tion the  discovery  of  a  new  gas  in  the  atmosphere,  which 
they  named  argon  from  the  Greek  word  meaning  "inert." 
This  gas  is  present,  as  Cavendish  suggested,  in  an  amount 
approximating  one  per  cent. 

The  isolation  of  argon  opened  up  a  new  field  of  investiga- 
tion in  modern  chemistry,  which  we  will  have  occasion  to 
refer  to  again  in  another  chapter.  Argon  has  recently  found 
an  industrial  application  as  the  filling  atmosphere  in  incan- 
descent electric  light  bulbs,2 

We  must  now  return  to  the  year  1800  and  the  foundation 
of  the  Royal  Institution,  for  this  foundation  more  than  any 
other  event  in  history  signalized  the  entrance  of  chemistry 

2  A  letter  from  Dr.  W.  R.  Whitney  of  the  General  Electric  Co.  states 
that  practically  all  the  ordinary  incandescent  lamps  now  made,  be- 
tween 50  and  1000  Watts,  contain  argon  (about  80  per  cent,  20  per 
cent  being  nitrogen).  Also  the  15  and  20  ampere  street  series  lamps 
contain  argon.  The  argon  is  obtained  from  fractionation  of  liquid  air. 


Chemistry  in  the  Service  of  Man  47 

into  the  service  of  man.  The  first  task  imposed  on  Sir  Hum- 
phry Davy  (1778-1829),  the  newly  selected  manager,  was 
the  delivery  of  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  chemical  principles 
of  tanning.  Next  followed  practical  courses  on  the  applica- 
tion of  chemistry  to  agriculture,  but  it  was  in  his  studies 
and  research  in  electro-chemistry  that  Davy  achieved  his 
greatest  fame.  The  terrible  explosions  which  were  continual- 
ly taking  place  in  coal  mines  had  long  been  a  handicap  to 
the  development  of  civilization.  In  1815  Davy  began  a  lab- 
oratory investigation  of  "fire  damp"  gas  sent  from  the  mines 
at  New  Castle.  These  studies  led  to  the  discovery  of  the 
famous  Davy  safety  lamp.  A  large  collection  of  the  dif- 
ferent models  made  in  the  course  of  these  inquiries  is  still 
in  the  possession  of  the  Royal  Institution. 

Space  will  not  permit  of  reference  to  the  enormous  num- 
ber of  contributions  to  theoretical  and  applied  chemistry 
which  issued  from  the  Royal  Institution  during  Humphry 
Davy's  incumbency.  In  spite  of  Davy's  brilliance  and  ac- 
complishments, he  never  has  been  looked  upon  as  a  scien- 
tific star  of  the  very  first  magnitude.  One  of  these 
surpassingly  bright  stars  was  soon  to  rise  above  the  horizon. 
About  the  year  1800  there  was  (as  Tyndall  has  related  the 
story)  running  about  the  London  pavements  a  bright-eyed 
errand  boy  with  a  load  of  brown  curls  upon  his  head  and  a 
packet  of  newspapers  under  his  arm.  The  son  of  a  humble 
blacksmith,  this  street  lad  was  glad  to  earn  a  few  pennies 
by  minding  the  great  Humphry  Davy's  horse  as  he  drew 
up  at  the  door  of  the  Royal  Institution  in  Albemarle  Street. 
But  more  than  this,  the  lad  would  creep  into  the  dark  gallery 
of  the  lecture  hall  and  try  to  write  down  so  much  of  the 
great  man's  lectures  as  he  could  understand.  Shortly  after- 
ward, apprenticed  to  a  journeyman  bookbinder,  he  used 
each  leisure  moment  and  burned  the  midnight  oil  in  his  ef- 


48  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

fort  to  attain  his  heart's  desire,  which  was  to  follow  in  the 
footsteps  of  his  hero  and  patron,  Humphry  Davy.  And 
Davy  had  kept  his  eye  on  this  bright  lad,  and  on  March  1, 
1813,  engaged  him  as  a  laboratory  assistant  in  the  Royal 
Institution.  As  the  direct  result  of  the  birth  of  a  poor  boy 
on  a  farm  at  Woburn,  Mass.,  just  sixty  years  later  a  poor 
boy  from  the  London  pavements  was  given  his  opportunity, 
and  the  work  of  Michael  Faraday  at  once  began  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  modern  electro-chemistry  and  electrical  en- 
gineering. 

Let  us  see  if  this  statement  is  in  any  way  an  exaggera- 
tion of  the  truth.  But  first  let  us  linger  one  moment  for 
one  more  personal  glimpse  into  the  connection  formed  be- 
tween Michael  Faraday  and  Humphry  Davy.  In  October, 
1813,  Sir  Humphry  and  Lady  Davy  travelled  to  the  conti- 
nent, as  Sir  Humphry  was  to  be  the  recipient  of  foreign  hon- 
ors and  orders  to  be  received  from  the  hands  of  royalties  at 
the  instigation  of  the  various  academies  of  science  and  phi- 
losophy. On  this  famous  occasion,  Faraday,  upon  the  insist- 
ence it  would  seem  rather  of  Lady  Davy  than  of  Sir  Hum- 
phry travelled  as  a  valet  and  joined  the  servants  at  their 
meals.  Tyndall  has  related  that  Davy  was  considerate,  but 
Lady  Davy  was  the  reverse.  She  treated  him  as  an  under- 
ling. They  halted  at  Geneva.  De  la  Rive,  the  elder,  had 
translated  Davy's  published  researches  for  the  benefit  of 
French  academicians.  He  welcomed  the  party  to  his  coun- 
try residence.  Both  scientists  were  sportsmen  and  went 
shooting  together.  Faraday  charged  Davy's  gun,  while 
De  la  Rive  charged  his  own.  The  Genevese  philosopher  was 
struck  by  the  intelligence  of  the  young  man  and  entered  into 
conversation  with  him.  It  seemed  impossible  that  a  person 
with  such  charm  of  manner  could  be  a  mere  servant.  On 
inquiry,  De  la  Rire  was  shocked  to  learn  that  the  soi-disant 


MICHAEL     FARADAY     WASHING     APPARATUS     FOR     SIR     HUMPHREY     DAVY 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man  49 

domestic  was  really  a  laboratory  assistant;  and  he  imme- 
diately proposed  that  Faraday  should  join  the  masters  in- 
stead of  the  servants  at  their  meals.  To  this,  Davy,  out  of 
weak  deference  to  his  wife,  objected;  but  an  arrangement 
was  made  that  Faraday  thereafter  was  to  have  his  food 
served  in  his  own  bedroom.  It  is  a  curious  and  interesting 
fact  that  on  Faraday's  subsequent  visit  to  the  continent 
years  later,  he  was  feted  and  dined,  seated  at  the  right  hand 
of  princes  and  rulers,  while  amongst  his  intimate  friends  and 
regular  correspondents  we  find  the  names  of  Humboldt, 
Herschel,  Dumas,  Liebig,  Becquerel,  Oersted,  Phliicker,  Du- 
Bois-Reymond,  Louis  Napoleon,  and  many  others. 

But  to  return  to  the  laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institution 
and  the  work  which  was  to  come  forth  from  it.  In  1820 
Oersted  of  Copenhagen  made  the  wonderful  announcement 
that  magnetism  and  electricity  were  correlated  forces  and 
immediately  the  acute  mind  of  Dr.  Wollaston  in  England 
perceived  that  if  Oersted's  observations  were  correct,  a  wire 
carrying  a  current  ought  to  rotate  around  its  own  axis 
under  the  influence  of  a  magnetic  pole.  In  April,  1821,  Wol- 
laston came  to  the  laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institution  and 
devised  an  experiment  which  failed.  Faraday,  who  had  for 
some  time  past  been  experimenting  with  the  problems  of 
electro-chemistry,  now  took  up  the  study  of  electro-magnet' 
ism,  and  the  brilliant  series  of  discoveries  which  were  to  pro- 
duce so  extraordinary  an  effect  upon  the  human  race  almost 
immediately  began.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  that 
Wollaston's  experiment  failed,  Faraday  succeeded  in  caus- 
ing a  wire  carrying  an  electric  current  to  rotate  around  a 
magnetic  pole.  This  was  not  Wollaston's  idea,  but  it  was 
closely  related  to  it,  and  demonstrated  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple on  which  the  action  of  the  electric  dynamo  generator 
and  the  electric  motor  depend.  For  the  next  ten  years 


50  Chemistry  cmd  Civilization 

scientific  miracle  after  miracle  issued  from  the  research  lab- 
oratories which  the  genius  of  Benjamin  Thompson  had 
founded  and  the  genius  of  Michael  Faraday  illumined.  By 
1831  Faraday  had  not  only  generated  currents  by  magnets 
and  made  magnets  both  permanent  and  transitory  by  cur- 
rents, but  he  generated  currents  by  currents,  thus  estab- 
lishing the  principles  of  induction.  Faraday's  law  estab- 
lished for  all  time  the  great  principle  of  electro-chemical 
decomposition  and  gave  birth  to  a  new  line  of  human  activ- 
ity. The  results  of  these  original  researches  in  electro- 
magnetism  passing  into  the  hands  of  many  men,  developed 
in  about  a  half  a  century  the  following  tools  of  human 
energy:  The  electric  dynamo  and  motor,  the  electric  light, 
the  electric  telegraph  and  the  telephone  both  by  wire  and 
wireless,  the  electric  propulsion  of  street  cars  and  railways. 
Through  the  development  of  the  electro-magnetic  ignition 
system,  the  gasoline  and  other  internal  combustion  engines, 
and  the  automobile,  the  aeroplane,  and  the  submarine  quickly 
followed.  But  above  and  beyond  all  in  its  ultimate  promise 
to  the  human  race  comes  the  possibility  of  deriving  energy 
and  power  from  natural  sources  which  will  exist  long  after 
natural  resources  have  been  exhausted.  Even  after  the  coal 
has  all  been  burned  and  the  world's  nitrate  beds  exhausted, 
it  is  presumable  that  water  still  will  be  running  down  the 
watersheds  of  the  world,  harnessed  to  the  whirring  wheels 
doing  the  world's  work  under  the  influence  and  control  of  the 
electro-magnetic  principles,  in  the  development  of  which 
Benjamin  Thompson  and  Michael  Faraday  were  perhaps  the 
humble  instruments  of  over-shadowing  design  guiding  the 
destinies  of  mankind.  And  who  shall  say  that  these  same 
electro-magnetic  principles  will  not  some  day  be  linked  to 
some  source  of  natural  energy  more  etherial  than  moving 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man  51 

water,  and  thus  make  wonders  real  }i  which  at  present  we 
only  dream? 

As  we  pass  to  the  consideration  #f  other  phases  of  our 
subject,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  just  as  the  first  British 
research  institution  was  founded  by  an  American,  the  first 
American  purely  research  institution  was  founded  in  Wash- 
ington by  an  Englishman,  John  Smithson  of  London,  to 
promote  science  and  the  useful  arts.  Although  not  as 
prolific  in  discovery  as  the  Royal  Institution,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  under  this  foundation  Joseph  Henry  lab- 
ored for  many  years  to  the  extension  and  development  of 
contemporary  science  in  America.  It  was  here  that  the 
patient,  though  to  him  unrewarded,  labors  of  Samuel  P. 
Langley  worked  out  the  principles  which  permitted  other 
men  to  develop  the  successful  heavier-than-air  flying  ma- 
chine and  so  in  a  few  years  make  true  Tennyson's  wonder- 
ful prophesy: 

Heard  the  Heavens  filled  with  shouting, 
And  there  rained  a  ghastly  dew 
From  the  nation's  airy  navies 
Grappling  in  the  central  blue. 

While  we  have  been  following  the  great  contributions  to 
chemistry  which  took  place  in  England  during  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  chemists  on  the  continent  had 
not  been  idle.  Volta  (1745-1827),  the  Italian  physicist, 
made  contributions  to  the  knowledge  of  electricity,  which 
made  much  of  the  work  of  Cavendish,  Davy  and  Faraday 
possible.  Berzelius  (1779-1848)  in  Sweden,  following  up 
Volta's  discoveries,  greatly  extended  knowledge  in  the  field 
of  electro-chemistry,  as  indeed  he  did  in  every  other  field 
of  chemistry.  In  Germany  Justus  von  Liebig  (1803-1873) 
founded  a  new  school  of  chemistry  at  Giessen,  which  became 
the  mecca  of  all  the  distinguished  students  of  chemistry  of 


5£  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

the  day.  Liebig  first  seriously  applied  the  study  and  prin- 
ciples of  chemistry  to  the  problems  of  agriculture  and  food, 
and  prepared  the  way  for  the  great  contributions  of  the 
Frenchman,  Pasteur,  which  were  soon  to  follow.  One  of  the 
greatest  of  contributions  of  all  time  to  chemistry  and 
science  in  general  was  the  elaboration  by  Bunsen  and  Kirch- 
hoff  of  spectrum  analysis  which  has  put  a  new  weapon  of 
great  range  into  the  hands  of  chemists  and  astronomers.  By 
means  of  a  comparatively  simple  apparatus,  elementary 
bodies  are  enabled  to  signalize  their  presence  and  'to  all 
intents  and  purposes  write  their  own  autographs.  With 
this  instrument  the  chemical  composition  of  distant  suns  can 
be  analyzed  with  as  much  exactness  as  though  we  had  the 
material  in  our  laboratories,  while  numbers  of  unknown 
elements  on  the  earth,  as  well  as  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
sun  have  been  discovered  and  made  useful  for  man's  pur- 
poses. 

We  come  now  to  the  crowning  contribution  of  pure  chem- 
istry to  the  development  of  science  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. We  have  referred  in  a  previous  paragraph  to  Michael 
Faraday  as  a  scientific  star  of  the  first  magnitude,  but 
another  was  destined  to  appear  before  the  century  drew  to 
a  close.  Perhaps  one  of  the  most  remarkable  discoveries  of 
modern  chemistry  is  the  existence  of  bodies  of  identical  com- 
position but  quite  different  properties.  This  is  called 
isomerism,  and  two  or  more  such  bodies  are  known  as 
isomers.  The  great  Berzelius  had  noted  that  two  separate 
tartaric  acids  of  identical  composition  could  be  recovered 
from  the  dregs  or  lees  of  wine,  and  it  had  been  noted  that 
when  a  ray  of  polarized  light  was  passed  through  a  water 
solution  of  these  two  acids,  one  possessed  the  power  of 
turning  the  plane  of  the  polarized  ray  to  the  right  while  the 
other  possessed  no  rotary  power  and  was  to  all  intents  ap- 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man 


parently  optically  inactive.  In  reality,  acid  B  was  just 
twice  as  optically  active  as  acid  A.  It  remained  for  the 
genius  of  a  young  Frenchman,  Louis  Pasteur  (1822-1895), 
to  illumine  this  unexplainable  observation  and  to  begin  a 
series  of  researches,  the  results  of  which  will  profoundly 
affect  the  destiny  of  the  human  race  for  all  time  to  come. 
Pasteur  showed  that  the  inactivity  of  the  one  acid  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  composed  of  two  isomeric,  optically 
active  constituents,  one  the  ordinary  dextro-rotary  acid 
and  the  other  a  new  acid  which  possessed  an  equally  power- 


Crystals  which  when 
dissolved  in  water 
turn  the  plane  of 
polarization  to  the 
right. 


Crystals  which  when 
dissolved  in  water 
turn  the  plane  of 
polarization  to  the 
left. 


ful  left-handed  power.  He  then  went  further  and  explained 
how  the  arrangement  of  the  atoms  in  the  configuration  of  the 
two  molecules  was  similar  to  that  of  a  tetrahaedral  body 
and  its  mirror  image.  While  experimenting  with  these  iso- 
meric bodies  from  wine  lees,  Pasteur  was  led  to  the  com- 


54  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

mencement  of  his  classical  researches  on  fermentation.  The 
ordinary  green  mould  (penicillium  glaucum)  that  appears 
and  grows  on  damp  organic  matter  is  familiar  to  every  one. 
Pasteur  made  the  curious  discovery  that  when  this  mould 
grew  in  solutions  containing  the  optically  inactive  acid,  the 
right-handed  acid  was  destroyed,  the  left-handed  variety 
remaining  unchanged.  Here  was  an  observation  to  excite 
the  attention  of  science  for  what  possible  influence  could 
these  lowly  living  cells  be  exerting  in  order  to  carry  out 
such  a  selective  chemical  action?  Before  Pasteur's  time, 
the  phenomenon  of  fermentation  was  considered  strange 
and  obscure.  Attacking  a  new  and  untried  field  of  investi- 
gation, assailed  by  skepticism,  prejudice  and  even  ridicule 
on  almost  every  hand,  the  incomparable  genius  of  this  young 
Frenchman  never  faltered  until  he  had  revolutionized  the 
science  of  chemistry  and  medicine  and  practically  founded  as 
new  branches  of  science  fermentology,  biology,  and 
pathology. 

Michael  Faraday  throughout  his  career  was  occupied 
only  with  the  purely  scientific  aspects  of  his  subjects  and 
could  not  be  induced  to  betray  the  slightest  interest  in  the 
application  of  new  principles  to  the  service  of  mankind ;  this 
he  was  quite  willing  to  leave  to  others.  But  not  so  Pasteur, 
who  wrote:  "There  is  no  greater  charm  for  the  investigator 
than  to  make  new  discoveries ;  but  his  pleasure  is  heightened 
when  he  sees  that  they  have  a  direct  application  to  practical 
life."  Thomas  Huxley  has  stated  that  the  practical  money 
value  of  Pasteur's  discoveries  to  his  native  land  was  suf- 
ficient to  cover  the  entire  war  indemnity  paid  by  France  to 
Germany  in  1870.  He  studied  and  cured  the  silkworm  dis- 
ease which  threatened  one  of  his  country's  greatest  indus- 
tries. He  successfully  applied  the  same  principles  to  the 
cure  of  a  disease  which  was  attacking  the  vineyards  in  the 


Chemistry  m  the  Service  of  Man  55 

wine  growing  districts.  He  developed  the  principles  of  steri- 
lization and  pasteurization  of  wounds  and  foods,  thereby 
saving  the  lives  of  countless  millions  of  human  beings.  Final- 
ly he  attacked  that  most  hideous  of  diseases,  rabies,  and 
showed  how  it  could  be  controlled  and  cured.  Pasteur,  al- 
though a  most  simple,  affectionate  and  kindly-natured 
man,  did  not  hesitate  to  prosecute  his  studies  by  means 
of  animal  experimentation.  He  would  not  have  been 
popular  today,  with  numbers  of  well  meaning  but  misin- 
formed ladies  and  gentlemen  who  assail  the  lobbies  of  legis- 
lative halls  in  the  effort  to  effect  prohibition  of  all  forms  of 
animal  experimentation,  carried  out  for  the  purpose  of 
acquiring  knowledge  in  order  to  alleviate  human  suffering 
and  disease.  With  curious  inconsistency,  these  advocates 
pack  the  legislative  corridors,  warmed  and  adorned  with  the 
skins  of  animals  that  have  been  cruelly  trapped  and  left  to 
starve  to  death  in  their  frigid  habitats. 

We  have  not  space  to  follow  further  Pasteur's  wonderful 
contributions  to  knowledge,  but  we  may  fittingly  close  this 
chapter  with  the  words  of  his  own  oration  at  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  Pasteur  Institute: 

Two  opposing  laws  seem  to  me  now  in  contest.  The  one 
a  law  of  blood  alicf  dea/EE,  o~penifig'"aut'  eacITHay  new  modes 
of  destruction,  forcing  nations  to  be  always  ready  for 
battle.  The  other  a  law  of  peace,  work  and  health,  whose 
only  aim  is  to  deliver  man  from  the  calamities  which  beset 
him.  The  one  seeks  violent  conquests,  the  other  the  relief 
of  mankind.  The  one  places  a  single  life  above  all  victories, 
the  other  sacrifices  hundreds  of  thousands  of  lives  to  the 
ambition  of  a  single  individual.  The  law  of  which  we  are 
the  instruments  strives  even  through  the  carnage  to  cure 
the  wounds  due  to  the  law  of  war.  Which  of  these  two  laws 
will  prevail,  God  only  knows.  But  of  this  we  may  be  sure, 
that  Science  obeying  the  law  of  humanity,  will  always  labor 
to  enlarge  the  frontiers  of  life. 


CHAPTER  IH 

CHEMISTRY  AND  INDUSTRY 

WE  have  already  seen  in  the  previous  chapters  that  the 
study  and  science  of  chemistry  has  been  developed 
along  two  separate  lines.  There  is  an  order  of  mind,  like 
that  of  the  great  Faraday,  that  dislikes  the  very  thought 
of  the  application  of  scientific  research  to  industry.  In- 
vestigators of  this  type  treat  with  scornful  contempt  the 
question:  Of  what  good  or  use  to  mankind  are  your  patient 
and  exhaustive  researches?  Very  likely  Cavendish  as  well 
as  Faraday  was  of  this  type  but  it  has  been  shown  that  the 
application  of  the  work  of  these  two  great  masters  has  had 
a  most  profound  effect  upon  industrial  development  as  well 
as  upon  pure  science.  On  the  other  hand,  Humphry  Davy* 
and  Pasteur  took  eager  delight  in  the  application  of  their 
discoveries  to  the  everyday  commercial  problems  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

The  application  of  chemistry  to  the  great  basic  industries 
upon  which  civilization  really  rests  was  making  a  precarious 
start  during  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but 
the  French  revolution  dealt  heavy  blows  to  organized  in- 
dustry as  well  as  to  scientific  research.  The  hurt  done  to  the 
progress  of  science  by  the  Reign  of  Terror  was  incalculable. 
The  great  Lavoisier  was  guillotined  on  the  Place  de  la  Revo- 
lution, now  the  Place  de  Concord  in  Paris,  the  eighth  of  May, 
1794«.  The  last  appeal  for  mercy  was  met  by  his  savage 

56 


Chemistry  and  Industry  57 

judges  with  the  famous  reply:  "The  Republic  has  no  need 
for  savants."  All  this  is  well  known  history,  but  it  is  not 
so  well  known  that  another  execution  on  the  same  spot, 
which  had  already  taken  place  on  the  sixth  of  November, 
1793,  was  destined  to  strike  the  new  art  of  applied  chemistry 
a  rude  blow  which  delayed  its  advance  for  many  years.  We 
are  here  referring  to  the  death  by  the  guillotine  of  Phillipe 
Egalite,  the  famous  patriot,  Due  d'Orleans,  near  relative 
of  the  hapless  king,  Louis  XVI. 

The  alkali  substance  known  as  soda  ash  or  sodium  car- 
bonate enters  in  one  form  or  another  into  the  manufacture 
of  nearly  every  product  of  industry.  Upon  this  chemical 
substance  and  its  allied  compounds  depend  the  prime  needs 
of  civilization  comprised,  for  example,  in  the  manufacture  of 
glass,  paper  and  soap,  as  well  as  cotton  spinning.  This 
alkali  is  also  equally  basic  with  sulfuric  acid  in  the  manu- 
facture of  gunpowder  and  high  explosives,  and  therefore  is 
a  war  material  of  prime  importance. 

Nicolas  Le  Blanc  (1742-1806),  an  immortal  name  in  the 
history  of  chemical  technology,  was  physician  to  the  Duke 
of  Orleans,  and  in  1787  he  was  attracted  to  the  urgent  war 
problem  presented  by  the  scarcity  of  sodium  carbonate.  Up 
to  that  time  potash  leached  from  wood  ashes  was  the  more 
important  of  the  two  fixed  alkalies.  But  potash  is  unfitted 
to  take  the  place  of  soda  in  many  of  the  operations  of  peace 
and  war,  while  the  great  drain  upon  the  forests  as  a  prin- 
cipal source  of  alkali  could  not  possibly  continue.  On  the 
other  hand,  common  salt  (the  chloride  of  sodium)  is  abun- 
dant in  many  countries,  while  the  oceans  offer  an  inexhausti- 
ble supply.  The  Arabs  imported  soda  collected  as  natural 
efflorescence  in  desert  countries,  and  the  ashes  of  certain  un- 
usual plants  yielded  it  in  an  impure  form  known  as  "barilla," 
but  there  was  no  other  source  of  supply. 


58  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  men's  minds  should  turn  to 
common  salt  as  a  raw  material.  In  1775,  the  French  Acad- 
emy of  Science  offered  a  prize  of  2400  Livres  for  the  solu- 
tion of  this  problem,  and  though  the  prize  has  never  to  this 
day  been  paid  to  any  one,  the  problem  was  amply  solved 
first  by  Le  Blanc  and  afterwards  by  the  Belgian  Solvay 
brothers.  In  1789  Le  Blanc  proposed  to  the  Duke  of  Or- 
leans that  he  finance  a  factory  to  manufacture  soda  ash 
from  salt.  Le  Blanc's  process  converted  common  salt  to  the 
sulphate  by  a  treatment  with  sulphuric  acid,  the  by-product 
muriatic  acid  formed  in  the  reaction  being  condensed  and 
saved.  The  sodium  sulphate  thus  formed  was  mixed  with 
ground  chalk  or  limestone  and  a  little  charcoal,  and  given  a 
heat  treatment  which  converts  the  sodium  sulphate  into  the 
carbonate.  Lunge,  the  great  authority  on  alkali,  states  that 
Le  Blanc's  specifications  for  this  manufacture  were  so  clearly 
worked  out  that  with  the  most  moderate  skill  in  building  the 
works,  pecuniary  success  was  certain  in  view  of  the  com- 
paratively enormous  price  then  paid  for  soda  in  the  shape 
of  barilla.  With  money  furnished  by  the  Duke  of  Orleans, 
a  factory  was  erected  at  St.  Denis  and  called  "La  Fran- 
ciade."  The  profits  were  to  be  divided  9/20  to  the  Duke, 
9/20  to  Le  Bane  and  his  assistant  Dize,  and  2/20  to 
another  assistant.  The  factory  started  and  every  day  5  or  6 
hundred  weight  of  soda  was  made.  In  consequence  of  the 
war  with  Spain,  the  price  of  "barilla"  soared  to  110  francs 
a  kilo,  and  the  prospects  were  joyous  for  the  infant  indus^ 
try.  Suddenly  a  series  of  tragedies  occurred.  The  Duke 
was  arrested  and  executed.  The  works  La  Franciade  were 
confiscated  and  scattered.  Le  Blanc's  patent  which  repre- 
sented great  value  was  cancelled.  Le  Blanc  was  ruined  and 
absolutely  impoverished,  his  beloved  daughter  fell  ill  from 
want  and  died  of  fright  of  the  Terror.  After  lingering  on 


Chemistry  and  Industry  59 

several  miserable  years  trying  vainly  to  get  redress  from 
one  provisional  government  after  another,  Le  Blanc  put  an 
end  to  his  life  with  a  pistol  shot,  but  his  soul  went  march- 
ing on.  In  the  very  year  of  his  death  (1806)  an  alkali 
works  was  founded  in  Paris,  and  within  a  twelve-month  the 
St.  Gobain  plate  glass  works  was  manufacturing  plate  glass 
with  Le  Blanc's  soda. 

From  that  time  on  it  became  a  great  industry  and  spread 
rapidly  into  England,  Germany  and  Austria.  During  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  the  Le  Blanc  process  easily  triumphed 
over  all  its  rivals,  but  finally  was  challenged  and  overcome 
by  the  more  economical  ammonia-soda  process  of  Solvay. 
In  this  process  ammonium  carbonate  reacts  on  salt  brine 
and  thus  links  up  the  manufacture  of  soda  with  the  great 
coal  distillation  industry  in  which  ammonia  is  a  by-product. 
Our  own  great  Solvay  plants  at  Syracuse  comprise  some* 
seven  miles  of  connected  buildings  and  give  employment  to 
many  thousands  of  people.  In  its  turn  the  Solvay  process 
has  found  a  competitor  in  the  great  hydro-electric  methods 
by  which  the  power  of  Niagara  is  converted  into  electrical 
power  and  salt  brines  converted  b}7  electrolysis  into  soda  and 
chlorine.  In  this  reaction,  hydrogen  gas  is  made  as  a  by- 
product, and  though  as  yet  this  hydrogen  largely  is  allowed 
to  escape  into  the  air  to  seel:  the  furthermost  confines  of 
the  earth's  atmosphere,  it  may  eventually  find  a  use  in  the 
service  of  mankind.  The  other  by-product,  chlorine,  by 
absorption  in  lime  makes  bleaching  powder  which  is  essential 
to  the  great  paper  making  and  textile  industries. 

Another  chemical  which  is  basic  to  nearly  all  the  great    j 
industries  is  sulfuric  acid.     Some  one  has  suggested  that  the 
degree  of  a  nation's   civilization   can  be  measured  by  the 
quantity   of   sulfuric   acid  which   it   manufactures.      When 
native  sulfur  or  metallic  sulfide  ores  (pyrites)  are  roasted 


60  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

in  the  air,  they  burn  to  the  lower  oxide  of  sulfur  (SO2). 
In  order  to  make  sulfuric  acid,  it  is  necessary  to  attach  an- 
other oxygen  atom  to  the  molecule  to  form  S03.  This 
operation  is  not  as  simple  as  it  sounds,  and  it  is  no  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  the  balance  of  trade  between  the  nations 
has  frequently  fluctuated  since  the  seventeenth  century  as 
the  chemical  methods  and  arts  for  attaching  this  additional 
oxygen  atom  have  been  developed  by  the  chemists  of  the 
competing  countries. 

Joshua  Ward  (1685-1781)  of  England  was  the  first  to 
undertake  the  commercial  manufacture  of  sulfuric  acid  by 
deflagrating  a  mixture  of  nitre  and  sulfur  under  large  glass 
bells,  so  that  it  came  to  be  known  as  oil  of  vitriol  made  by 
the  bell  or  per  campanum.  Dr.  John  Roebuck  (1718-1794), 
also  in  England,  substituted  lead  chambers  and  although 
there  have  been  many  improvements,  chamber  acid  is  still 
manufactured  at  the  present  time.  The  most  interesting 
invention  in  connection  with  the  modern  manufacture  of 
sulfuric  acid  depends  upon  what  is  known  as  the  contact 
process  which  we  will  return  to  shortly. 

Native  sulfur  is  found  in  great  quantities  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  extinct  volcanic  geological  formations,  and  for 
many  centuries  most  of  the  brimstone  of  commerce  came 
from  Sicily,  which  permitted  that  little  Italian  island  to 
carry  on  a  very  considerable  trade  in  sulfur  with  the  United 
States.  In  boring  deep  wells  in  Louisiana  for  petroleum 
exploration,  enormous  strata  of  very  pure  sulfur  was  en- 
countered, but  there  was  no  way  to  come  at  the  deposit 
until  Frasch,  an  American  chemical  engineer,  conceived  the 
idea  of  letting  super-heated  steam  down  the  pipe  to  melt  the 
sulfur,  and  then  forcing  it  to  the  surface  just  as  oil  or  water 
can  be  raised  with  pumps.  This  was  a  fortunate  discovery 
for  America  but  quite  the  reverse  for  Sicily. 


Chemistry  and  Industry  61 

We  will  now  turn  back  a  few  years  to  the  time  of  Berzelius 
(1779-1848)  the  indefatigable  Swedish  chemist  who  in  1807 
devoted  himself  to  the  elucidation  of  the  Baltonian  laws  of 
chemical  combination  and  affinity.  Berzelius  saw  that  the 
exact  determination  of  the  atomic  weights  was  a  matter  of 
fundamental  importance,  and  for  ten  years,  with  unflag- 
ging industry  and  with  but  meager  appliances  (for  we  are 
told  that  much  of  his  work  was  done  in  his  kitchen  where 
he  was  assisted  by  a  faithful  cook),  he  determined  the 
atomic  and  molecular  weights  of  some  two  thousand  simple 
and  compound  bodies.  In  the  course  of  these  researches 
Berzelius  noted  that  certain  molecules  that  did  not  react 
or  combine  with  each  other  to  any  extent  when  heated  or 
otherwise  treated  would  do  so  readily  when  they  were  in 
contact  at  the  same  time  with  a  third  substance,  even 
though  the  third  substance  was  not  altered  or  changed  in 
slightest  degree  during  the  course  of  the  reaction.  This 
contact  action  is  now  known  as  catalysis,  and  it  has  made 
possible  some  very  wonderful  advances  and  discoveries  in 
the  application  of  chemistry  to  industry.  Catalyzers  con- 
sist usually  of  metals  or  their  salts.  Faraday  in  studying 
the  union  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen  to  form  water,  soon 
made  the  discovery  that  if  these  gases  mixed  in  the  proper 
proportion  were  allowed  to  impinge  upon  a  small  disc  of 
clean  metallic  platinum,  the  velocity  of  reaction  was  so  in- 
creased that  the  mixture  exploded.  Many  workers  have 
since  been  engaged  in  this  fascinating  field  of  research.  By 
allowing  a  mixture  of  S02  and  oxygen  to  impinge  on  plati- 
num gauze,  sulfuric  acid  is  made  directly  by  the  contact 
process.  In  a  similar  manner,  nitrogen  from  the  air  can 
be  made  to  unite  with  hydrogen  to  form  ammonia,  and  this, 
in  turn,  can  be  made  to  unite  with  oxygen  of  the  air  to 
form  nitric  acid.  It  is  principally  because  platinum  was 


6£  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

so  needed  as  a  catalyzer  during  the  war  that  the  women  of 
America  were  urged  to  turn  in  their  platinum  mounted 
jewelry,  while  the  jewelers  and  dentists  were  asked  to  ab- 
stain from  the  use  of  this  beautiful  and  costly  metal. 

Another  very  interesting  application  of  catalysis  to  in-< 
dustry  is  in  the  hydrogenation  of  oils.  The  catalytic  con- 
tact of  certain  metals  appears  to  stimulate  the  rather  un- 
reactive  element  hydrogen  and  awaken  it  from  its  normally 
dormant  condition  so  that  it  immediately  combines  with 
other  bodies,  as  its  partner  oxygen  is  ever  prone  to  do.  In 
1903  it  was  discovered  that  the  liquid  vegetable  fatty  oil, 
olein,  could  be  solidified  by  contact  with  a  nickel  catalyzer. 
By  this  means  cottonseed  and  other  vegetable  and  nut  oils 
can  be  solidified  and  made  into  palatable  and  wholesome 
food  products.  Today,  to  quote  a  recent  authority,1  "this 
branch  of  the  oil  industry  is  growing  by  leaps  and  bounds, 
and  its  advent  into  the  field  has  brought  a  flood  of  con- 
gratulations, protests  and  criticisms,  market  disturbances, 
and  great  activity  among  chemists  to  improve  the  catalytic 
materials  and  processes  of  treatment." 

Although  it  has  been  so  much  studied,  the  mechanism  of 
and  reason  for  catalysis  or  contact  action  is  not  under- 
stood, so  that  it  has  been  cynically  referred  to  as  the  last' 
refuge  of  chemists  when  pressed  for  an  explanation  of  ob- 
scure phenomena. 

One  curious  fact  in  connection  with  catalysis  should  be 
referred  to  before  leaving  the  subject.  Since  the  days  of 
Pasteur,  it  has  been  known  that  living  cells,  such  as  yeasts 
and  bacteria,  produce  fermentation  and  various  biochemical 
reactions,  and  it  is  now  known  that  in  many  cases  the  ex- 
pressed and  even  the  dried  juices  of  these  cells,  products 
known  as  "enzymes,"  will  carry  on  precisely  the  same  re- 
1  Hydrogenation  of  Oils.  Carleton  Ellis.  Van  Nostrand  (1914). 


Chemistry  and  Industry  63 

actions  as  the  living-  cells  themselves.  It  does  not  in  the 
least  surprise  us  that  living  cells  can  be  poisoned  and 
anaesthetized.  A  pinch  of  arsenic  will  kill  even  a  man,  a 
few  drops  of  chloroform  will  put  him  to  sleep,  and  much 
less  of  these  drugs  will  produce  the  same  effect  on  yeast 
cells.  The  enzymes,  however,  which  cannot  by  any  stretch  of 
the  imagination  be  called  living  beings  can  also  be  killed 
and  inhibited  by  the  same  means  as  the  living  cells.  But 
now  comes  the  surprising  fact:  A  catalyzer  consisting  of 
a  bit  of  clean  metal  such  as  platinum  or  nickel  can  be 
poisoned  and  in  many  cases  by  impurities  in  the  reacting 
gases  or  bodies  that  would  be  also  harmful  to  living  cells. 
There  is  a  great  mystery  hidden  in  these  observations,  which 
may  in  its  final  elucidation  by  science  shed  some  light  on 
the  origin  and  nature  of  life,  if  not  indeed  of  death.  We 
have  much  ground  to  cover  in  the  application  of  chemistry 
to  industry,  and  we  must  leave  this  fascinating  and  very 
modern  field  of  scientific  inquiry  for  more  practical  sub- 
jects. 

The  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  is  the  one  great  basis 
I  of  civilization.  Deprived  of  iron  (and  we  will  use  this  word 
generically  to  include  steel  and  its  alloys),  man  would  re- 
vert at  once  to  the  nomadic  condition  of  his  earliest  an- 
cestors. Imagination  can  no  longer  contemplate  an  iron- 
less  world  nor  conceive  of  what  life  would  be  like  without 
it.  Our  own  distinguished  American  metallurgist,  Henry 
M.  Howe,  has  introduced  his  article  on  iron  and  steel  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Brittanica  in  the  following  interesting  way : 

Iron,  the  most  abundant  and  the  cheapest  of  the  heavy 

metals,   the   strongest   and   most  magnetic   of   known   sub- 

\     stances,  is  perhaps  also  the  most  indispensable  of  all  save 

'    the  air  we  breathe  and  the  water  we  drink.     For  one  kind 

\  of  meat  we  could  substitute  another ;  wool  could  be  replaced 


64  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

by  cotton,  silk,  or  fur ;  were  our  common  silicate  glass  gone, 
we  could  probably  perfect  and  cheapen  some  other  of  the 
transparent  solids;  but  even  if  the  earth  could  be  made  to 
yield  any  substitute  for  the  forty  or  fifty  million  tons  of 
iron  which  we  use  each  year  for  rails,  wire,  machinery,  and 
structural  purposes  of  many  kinds,  we  could  not  replace 
either  the  steel  of  our  cutting  tools  or  the  iron  of  our  mag- 
nets, the  basis  of  all  commercial  electricity.  This  usefulness 
iron  owes  in  part,  indeed,  to  its  abundance,  through  which 
it  has  led  us  in  the  last  few  thousands  of  years  to  adapt  our 
ways  to  its ;  but  still  in  chief  part  first  to  the  single  qualities 
in  which  it  excels,  such  as  its  strength,  its  magnetism,  and 
the  property  which  it  alone  has  of  being  made  at  will  ex- 
tremely hard  by  sudden  cooling  and  soft  and  extremely 
pliable  by  slow  cooling;  second,  to  the  special  combinations 
of  useful  properties  in  which  it  excels,  such  as  its  strength 
with  its  ready  welding  and  shaping  both  hot  and  cold ;  and 
third,  to  the  great  variety  of  its  properties.  It  is  a  very 
Proteus.  It  is  extremely  hard  in  our  files  and  razors,  and 
extremely  soft  in  our  horse-shoe  nails,  which  in  some  coun- 
tries the  smith  rejects  unless  he  can  bend  them  on  his  fore- 
head ;  with  iron  we  cut  and  shape  iron.  It  is  extremely  mag- 
netic and  almost  non-magnetic ;  as  brittle  as  glass  and  almost 
as  pliable  and  ductile  as  copper;  extremely  springy,  and 
springless  and  dead;  wonderfully  strong,  and  very  weak; 
conducting  heat  and  electricity  easily,  and  again  offering 
great  resistance  to  their  passage ;  here  welding  readilv?  there 
incapable  of  welding;  here  very  infusible,  there  melting  with 
relative  ease.  The  coincidence  that  so  indispensable  a  thing 
should  also  be  so  abundant,  that  an  iron-needing  man  should 
be  set  on  an  iron-cored  globe,  certainly  suggests  design.  The 
indispensableness  of  such  abundant  things  as  air,  water  and 
light  is  readily  explained  by  saying  that  their  very  abun- 
dance has  evolved  a  creature  dependent  on  them.  But  the 
indispensable  qualities  of  iron  did  not  shape  man's  evolution, 
because  its  great  usefulness  did  not  arise  until  historic  times, 
pr  even,  as  in  case  of  magnetism,  until  modern  times, 


Chemistry  and  Industry  65 

The  words  "iron"  and  "steel"  are  often  very  loosely  used, 
and  it  may  be  as  well  at  this  place  to  discuss  their  meaning. 
Unfortunately,  considerable  difference  of  opinion  exists, 
even  amongst  metallurgists,  on  this  subject  of  definition. 
According  to  one  school,  any  metal  melted  in  a  steel  making 
furnace,  that  is  poured  into  and  cooled  in  a  mould,  is  steel, 
while  any  metal  that  is  hammered  and  worked  down  from 
the  one  or  other  raw  material  in  a  pasty  condition  is  iron. 
According  to  this  rather  narrow  view,  if  the  so-called 
puddling  process  should  be  entirely  abandoned,  iron  as  a 
commercial  product  would  become  as  extinct  as  the  dodo. 
Strictly  speaking,  in  a  dictionary  sense,  steel  is  iron  com- 
bined with  carbon  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  while  iron 
does  not  or  should  not  contain  combined  carbon.  These 
latter  definitions  will  be  adhered  to  for  our  present  pur- 
poses. 

In  the  earliest  recorded  times,  man  smelted  iron  by  mixing 
the  ore  which  is  found  in  nature  as  an  oxide  with  coal  or 
charcoal,  and  heating  the  mixture,  using  rude  bellows,  at 
the  same  time  working  and  hammering  the  hot,  pasty  mass 
until  the  oxygen  was  entirely  removed  by  uniting  with  the 
carbon.  There  is  a  wonderful  column  or  monument  of  iron 
at  Delhi  in  India,  which  was  made  in  this  way  many  years 
before  Christ.  As  the  centuries  went  by  many  improvements 
in  manufacturing  iron  and  its  conversion  into  steel  were 
made,  as  the  work  of  the  old  armorers,  which  has  come  down 
to  us,  bears  witness  to. 

In  1856  Henry  Bessemer,  an  Englishman,  invented  the 
process  of  blowing  air  through  molten  pig  iron  in  enormous 
pear-shaped  vessels,  thereby  converting  large  quantities  of 
the  metal  into  steel  in  a  remarkably  short  time,  the  neces- 
sary high  heat  being  obtained  by  the  burning  of  the  im- 
purities contained  in  the  pig  iron  instead  of  by  the  use  of 


66  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

costly  fuel.  This  process  revolutionized  the  art  of  steel 
making  and  produced  the  most  profound  effect  upon  civili- 
zation. From  this  time  on,  the  building  of  railroads  began 
to  open  new  empires,  while  steel  ships  carried  the  world's 
commerce  throughout  the  seven  seas.  This  in  turn  stimu- 
lated the  necessity  which  is  in  truth  the  mother  of  inven- 
tion, and  the  electric  telegraph  and  many  of  the  other 
wonderful  inventions  of  the  nineteenth  century  quickly 
followed. 

The  open  hearth  process,  first  installed  by  the  Martin 
brothers  in  France  and  at  about  the  same  time  by  Siemens 
in  England,  furnished  an  almost  equally  economical  process 
for  making  steel  from  even  more  impure  ores,  and  for  that 
reason  is  at  present  challenging  the  Bessemer  converter's 
supremacy  in  its  own  field.  For  most  purposes  today,  open 
hearth  steel  is  considered  superior  to  Bessemer. 

Up  to  a  comparatively  recent  period  the  open  hearth  has 
been  considered  as  exclusively  a  steel  making  process.  The 
purer  carbonless  irons  which  are  superior  to  ordinary  steels 
for  a  great  many  purposes  were  mainly  imported  into  the 
United  States  from  Norway  and  Sweden  where  the  lower 
labor  costs  permitted  the  carbon,  manganese  and  other  im- 
purities to  be  eliminated  to  the  lowest  possible  minimum.  It 
is  a  matter  for  congratulation  that  we  now  have  worked  out 
an  American  process  for  making  commercially  pure  iron  in 
the  open-hearth  furnace  on  the  same  large  scale  of  opera- 
tion commonly  used  in  the  manufacture  of  ordinary  mild  or 
low  carbon  steels.  This  American  process,  now  some  ten 
years  old,  has  proved  itself  to  be  an  actual  contribution  to 
the  metallurgical  art  and  has  exerted  a  stimulating  influence 
on  the  production  of  high  quality  metals,  not  only  from  a 
slow  rusting  standpoint  but  also  because  extreme  purity  of 
product  is  desirable  for  a  great  many  special  purposes. 


Chemistry  and  Industry  67 

Next  to  iron  and  steel  in  the  order  of  importance  among 
the  basic  industries  of  man,  come  the  ceramic  arts  in  which 
we  may  include  all  objects  fashioned  of  clay  and  burned  in 
kilns.  We  may  well  be  astonished  at  the  proficiency  of 
the  ancient  Greek  civilization  in  the  control  of  the  chemical 
processes  by  which  they  manufactured  their  wonderful 
glazes  which  it  is  doubtful  if  modern  ceramic  chemists  could 
duplicate.  The  study  of  the  black  and  red  figured  pottery 
and  fragments  which  have  been  excavated  after  remaining 
buried  for  centuries  in  the  earth  has  become  a  special  branch 
of  archeology,  and  shows  by  the  test  of  time  the  wonderful 
durability  of  the  ancient  pottery  and  glazes.  The  mar- 
velous china  and  porcelain  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with  their 
beautiful  colors  and  glazes,  have  excited  the  admiration  of 
mankind  and  stimulated  the  zeal  of  collectors.  These  prod- 
ucts serve  to  show  the  results  that  the  purely  empirical 
chemistry  of  the  earlier  days  was  able  to  achieve  in  the 
hands  of  the  ancient  clay  worker,  more  especially  among  the 
Chinese. 

Among  the  many  discoveries  of  the  nineteenth  century 
which  profoundly  influenced  the  progress  of  civilization  was 
the  discovery  by  Joseph  Aspdin  of  Leeds  in  England  of 
Portland  cement.  The  only  connection  between  Portland 
cement  and  the  place  Portland  is  that  when  mixed  with 
water  in  the  proper  proportions,  it  sets  or  hardens  into  a 
mass  resembling  natural  stone  quarried  at  Portland,  Eng- 
land. Hydraulic  cements  which  will  harden  with  water  were 
in  use  many  years  before  Aspdin's  discovery,  and  the  ancient 
Romans  knew  and  used  them  under  the  name  of  Roman 
cements.  These  were  made  of  Vesuvian  lava  cooled  and 
ground  either  with  or  without  lime,  but  the  modern  method, 
carefully  controlled  by  chemical  analysis,  calcines  a  definite 


68  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

mixture  of  clay  and  limestone,  and,  being  an  artificial  prod- 
uct, it  is  of  substantially  uniform  composition  and  quality. 
And  what  a  wonderful  material  this  is  which  industrial 
chemistry  has  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  engineer.  With 
it  he  constructs  foundations  underneath  the  seas  and  builds 
railroads  above  them,  he  bridges  the  rivers  and  dams  them 
for  the  development  of  power,  designs  and  constructs  monu- 
mental buildings  forty  stories  high,  constructs  ocean-going 
ships,  and  altogether  takes  upon  himself  the  attributes  of 
a  creator,  outdoing  and  out-distancing  Nature  herself. 
'  We  must  now  return  for  a  moment  to  some  work  that  was 
being  carried  on  in  the  laboratories  of  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion of  Great  Britain  in  1825.  In  that  year,  Michael  Fara- 
day was  investigating  illuminating  gas  obtained  by  distil- 
ling certain  oils.  In  the  course  of  this  research,  Faraday 
discovered  a  mobile,  liquid  hydrocarbon  which  was  found  to 
consist  of  a  union  of  six  atoms  of  carbon  with  six  atoms  of 
hydrogen  (C6H6).  This  was  a  momentous  discovery  as  it 
turned  out,  although  as  it  was  somewhat  outside  Faraday's 
principal  lines  of  research  which  were  mainly  electrical  and 
electro-chemical,  it  is  probable  that  it  did  not  particularly 
interest  him.  In  any  case,  we  hear  no  more  of  it  until  1833 
when  Mitscherlich  (1794-1863),  a  German  chemist,  pre- 
pared the  same  hydrocarbon  by  heating  benzoic  acid  ob- 
tained from  an  oriental  gum  known  to  the  trade  as  gum  ben- 
zoin or  dragon's-blood  (Styrax  benzoin).  Mitscherlich  im- 
mediately named  the  hydrocarbon  benzin  or  benzine.  The 
following  year  Liebig  proposed  the  name  benzol  from  the 
Latin  word  oleum,  oil.  Again  we  hear  little  of  this  new 
hydrocarbon  which  was  destined  to  exercise  so  profound  an 
influence  upon  the  history  of  the  human  race,  until  1845 
when  A.  W.  Hofmann  (1818-1892),  a  German  chemist, 


Chemistry  and  Industry  69 

established  in  England  by  the  Prince  Consort,  rediscovered  it 
in  coal  tar  and  called  it  benzene. 

Little  did  anyone  suppose  in  1850  that  this  rather  malo- 
dorous liquid  hydrocarbon  of  Faraday,  Mitscherlich  and 
Hofmann  was  to  furnish  the  basis  for  the  great  coal  tar 
industry  with  its  dyes,  medicinals,  and  explosives,  "ajidTwas 
destined  to  make  the  greatest  war  of  mankind  possible  even 
if  it  did  not  directly  contribute  to  its  causes,  through  the 
international  jealousies  and  the  struggle  for  mastery  which 
it  occasioned. 

The  atom  of  carbon  is  quadrivalent,  that  is  to  say,  it  has 
four  linkages  or  points  of  attraction  for  other  atoms,  and 
is  generally  written: 


But  the  most  interesting  characteristic  is  the  ability  of 
carbon  to  link  up  in  chains, such  as: 


c— c 


This  characteristic,  in  which  the  carbon  atom  may  be  said 
to  be  unique  among  the  elements,  permits  the  endless  variety 
of  architecture  in  the  structure  of  the  molecules  of  organic 
bodies.  All  this  will  be  discussed  in  detail  in  the  next 
chapter. 

We  have  in  a  previous  paragraph  noted  Professor  Howe's 
suggestion  that  the  appearance  of  iron-needing  man  on  an 
iron-cored  globe  suggests  design.  What  shall  we  say,  then, 
of  the  possibility  that  the  unique  self-linking  property  of 
the  carbon  atom  was  especially  and  purposely  conferred? 
Without  this  property^  life  on  this  planet  might  exist  in 


70  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

some  primitive  form,  but  most  certainly  the  evolution  and 
development  of  life  and  civilization  could  never  have  gone 
on.  Why  the  atoms  of  other  elements  should  not  also  possess 
this  characteristic,  is  as  inexplicable  as  that  iron  should  be 
the  only  one  capable  of  appearing  as  a  temporary  or  perma- 
nent magnet,  another  phenomenon  on  which  the  whole  struc- 
ture of  modern  civilization  is  based. 

*"    -  •„ 

We  have  already  seen  that  benzene  2  or  benzol  is  a  chemi- 
cal compound  made  up  of  molecules  of  the  composition 
C6H6.  In  1858  Kekule,  a  German  chemist  and  pupil  of 
Liebig,  published  a  paper  in  which  he  discussed  the  quadri- 
valence  and  linking  power  of  the  carbon  atom,  and  this  led 
up  to  the  announcement  in  1865  of  a  theory  which  has  been 
called  "the  most  brilliant  piece  of  prediction  to  be  found 
in  the  whole  range  of  organic  chemistry."  This  theory  set 
forth  that  the  six  atoms  of  benzene  are  connected  in  a 
closed  chain  or  ring  formation  which  for  convenience  is 
expressed  in  a  hexagon  formation  as  follows : 

H 

A 

H~C         C-H 

H4    U 


The  hydrogen  atoms  in  benzene  are  highly  reactive  and 
can  be  easily  substituted  or  linked  onto  by  other  atoms  or 
groups  of  atoms,  while  the  carbon  ring  is  extremely  stable 
and  difficult  to  break  down.  An  immense  amount  of  labor 

2  The  word  benzine  is  now  applied  to  the  lightest  fractions  of  the 
distillation  of  petroleum.  Benzine  is  not  a  distinct  chemical  com- 
pound, as  is  benzene,  but  is  a  mixture  of  hydrocarbons  of  variable  com- 
position. There  is  much  confusion  in  the  use  of  these  words. 


Chemistry  and  Industry  71 

has  been  expended  upon  Kekule's  theory,  in  the  effort  to  test 
it  or  to  improve  upon  it,  but  so  far  it  has  stood  the  test  of 
time.  It  may  truly  be  said  that  all  the  great  discoveries 
in  organic  chemistry  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  including  the  development  of  the  enormous  coal  tar 
dye,  explosive  and  medicinal  industries,  have  been  built  up 
on  the  benzene  ring  structure. 

Toluene,  a  less  volatile  liquid  than  benzene,  is  also  ob- 
tained from  the  distillation  of  coal.  This  is  simply  benzene 
with  one  of  the  hydrogen  atoms  replaced  by  a  methyl  group 
(CH3).  We  also  obtain  phenol,  with  one  of  the  hydrogens 
replaced  by  hydro xyl  (OH).  By  treating  benzene  first  with 
nitric  acid  to  make  nitro-benzene,  and  then  with  a  reducing 
agent,  which  substitutes  hydrogen  for  oxygen,  we  get  aniline. 
These  bodies  chemists  now  graphically  represent  as : 


These  bodies  are  the  building  blocks  of  the  organic  chem- 
ist, the  starting  points  from  which  he  will  build  you  out 
of  black,  viscid,  ill-smelling  coal  tar,  to  your  orders  and 
\  demands,  beautiful  colored  dyes,  the  delicate  perfumes  of 
the  flowers,  the  most  terrible  high  explosives,  anaesthetics  to 
put  you  to  sleep,  or  stimulants  to  excite  your  organs  to 
renewed  activity. 

The  coal  tar  dye  industry  had  its  first  real  beginning  in 
1856  when  Sir  William  Perkin  (1838-1907),  then  a  lad  of 
eighteen  who  had  been  working  as  an  assistant  to  Hofmann, 
the  great  German  professor  of  chemistry  at  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Chemistry  in  London,  made  an  accidental  discovery 


78  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

which  astonished  the  world.  We  are  told  that,  "devoting  his 
evenings  to  private  investigations  in  a  rough  laboratory 
fitted  up  at  his  home,  Perkin  was  fired  by  some  remarks  of 
Hofmann's  to  undertake  the  artificial  production  of  qui- 
nine." In  this  attempt  he  was  unsuccessful,  but  he  stumbled 
on  something  far  more  important.  Taking  aniline  as  his 
raw  material,  he  was  treating  it  with  certain  chemicals  when 
he  obtained  a  soot  black  precipitate  which  is  now  the  aniline 
black  of  commerce  and  with  which,  or  derivatives  of  which, 
nearly  all  of  our  black  textiles  are  dyed.  Going  a  step  fur- 
ther, Perkin  discovered  the  aniline  derivative,  aniline  blue  or 
mauve,  the  first  commercial  aniline  dye,  which  was  regularly 
manufactured  at  Harrow,  England,  by  the  discoverer  in 
conjunction  with  his  father  and  brother,  in  1857. 

In  1834,  however,  a  German  chemist  named  Runge  had 
also  accidentally  isolated  from  coal  tar  a  substance  which 
produced,  when  treated  with  chloride  of  lime,  a  beautiful 
blue  color  which  he  named  Kyanol.  The  significance  of  this 
discovery  does  not  seem  to  have  been  appreciated,  or  the 
Germans  might  have  preceded  the  English  into  this  field 
which  they  subsequently  preempted.  In  1841,  Fritsche, 
another  German,  showed  that  the  blue  vegetable  dye  from 
India,  known  as  indigo,  when  treated  with  caustic  potash 
yielded  an  oil  which  he  called  aniline,  from  the  Latin  name 
of  the  indigo  plant,  Indigofera  Anil.  The  word  anil  was 
in  turn  derived  from  an  old  Sanscrit  word  Nila,  meaning 
blue.  There  are  now  hundreds  of  aniline  dyes  of  all  pos- 
sible shades  of  beautiful  colors,  manufactured  from  coal 
tar,  but  it  is  an  interesting  fact  not  generally  known  that 
aniline,  a  yellowish  oil,  derived  its  name  from  indigo  blue 
many  years  before  Perkin  stumbled  on  his  famous  aniline 
blue  named  "mauve." 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  these  lectures  to  go  very  deeply 


Chemistry  and  Industry  73 

into  the  chemical  processes  by  which  the  coal  tar  inter- 
mediates are  changed  into  dyes,  medicinals,  perfumes,  and 
explosives,  but  we  have  covered  our  subject  sufficiently  to 
show  the  wizardry  of  chemistry  that  can  almost  in  a  day's 
time  derive  at  will  from  a  sticky,  stinking  mass  the  delicate 
perfume  of  the  violet,  the  beautiful  color  of  a  woman's  dress, 
or  the  little  tablet  of  aspirin  that  relieves  human  pain.  As 
the  author  has  previously  put  it :  3  "The  red  silk  parasol 
of  a  summer  beach,  and  the  red  wound  of  war  have  a  common 
origin  in  that  black,  sticky  mass." 

Either  directly  or  indirectly,  chemistry  as  applied  to  in- 
dustry affects  the  conditions  and  well  being  of  every  home. 
The  clothes  we  wear,  the  food  we  eat,  the  utensils  we  handle 
it  with,  the  materials  with  which  we  are  housed  or  trans- 
ported from  place  to  place,  the  medicines  we  depend  upon 
in  the  struggle  with  disease  and  death,  are  all  dependent 
on  strictly  chemical  industries. 

One  of  the  wonderful  accomplishments  of  modern  chem- 
istry is  the  synthesis  from  the  elements  or  from  some  com- 
mon raw  materials  of  products  useful  to  civilization,  which 
have  hitherto  been  exclusively  produced  by  organic  life  proc4 
esses.  True  synthetic  indigo  is  now  made  from  coal  tar 
napthalene  or  from  aniline.  At  the  risk  of,  or  perhaps  for 
the  purpose  of,  provoking  a  smile,  we  might  follow  a  Biblical 
precedent  and  record  the  synthesis  of  indigo  in  this  wise: 
Napthalene  begat  Phthalic  anhydride.  Phthalic  anhydride 
begat  Phthalimide.  Phthalimide  begat  Anthranilic  acid. 
Anthranilic  acid  begat  Phenyl-glycine-ortho-carboxylic  acid 
which  begat  indoxyl  which  begat  indigo  which  is  written : 

NH 
CO 

Chemistry  and  American  Industry.    Jour.  Franklin  Inst.,  May,  1017. 


74  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

Or,  again,  take  camphor  which  is  gum  from  a  tree  that 
grows  principally  in  Formosa  and  is  a  Japanese  monopoly, 
which  costs  at  present  something  more  than  $3.00  a  pound. 
Most  people  think  of  camphor  as  something  mainly  useful  in 
keeping  moths  away  from  their  winter  clothes  in  summer 
time.  But  camphor  mixed  with  nitrated  cotton  or  nitro- 
cellulose makes  celluloid  and  celluloid  makes  moving  picture 
films,  and  the  populations  of  the  earth  have  decided  that 
though  they  might  at  a  pinch  do  without  sugar  or  do  with- 
out bread,  they  cannot  do  without  "movies."  So  the  Jap- 
anese camphor  trees  are  milked  and  mulcted,  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  millions  must  not  be  interrupted.  Moreover, 
camphor  is  needed  to  make  artificial  leather,  and  artificial 
leather  is  necessary  to  make  Ford  cars,  and  the  time  does 
not  seem  far  distant  when  every  man,  woman  and  child  will 
need  at  the  very  least  a  Ford  car.  Let  us  see  what  the  " 
chemist  is  doing  about  this.  Camphor  trees  do  not  thrive 
very  well  in  our  United  States,  but  pine  trees,  God  bless 
them,  do.  The  pine  tree  yields  turpentine;  turpentine 
treated  with  hydrochloric  acid  yields  pinene  hydrochloride, 
and  this  can  be  changed  under  catalysis  to  a  complicated 
molecule  known  as  isoborneol,  and  this  by  oxidation  yields 
synthetic  camphor,  identical  in  every  respect  with  natural 
camphor  except  for  the  curious  fact  that  it  is  optically 
inactive,  while  all  the  natural  products  rotate  a  polarized 
light  ray.  There  follows  a  picture  of  the  structure  of  the 
camphor  molecule  as  chemists  write  it: 


Chemistry  and  Industry  75 

Of  all  the  numerous  organic  syntheses  that  chemistry  has 
achieved,  none  is  more  interesting  or  more  important  for  the 
future  than  that  of  India  rubber.  By  the  action  of  heat 
on  turpentine,  a  volatile  liquid  called  isoprene  is  formed. 
In  1892,  Sir  William  Tilden,  an  English  chemist,  read  a 
paper  before  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Birmingham,  in 
which  the  following  paragraph  occurred : 

I  was  surprised  a  few  weeks  ago  at  finding  the  contents  of 
the  bottles  containing  isoprene  from  turpentine  entirely 
changed  in  appearance.  In  place  of  a  limpid .  colourless 
liquid  the  bottles  contained  a  dense  syrup  in  which  were  float- 
ing several  large  masses  of  solid,  of  a  yellowish  colour.  Upon 
examination  this  turned  out  to  be  india-rubber.  .  .  .  The 
artificial,  like  natural,  rubber  appears  to  consist  of  two  sub- 
stances, one  of  which  is  more  soluble  in  benzene  of  carbon 
bisulphide  than  the  other.  A  solution  of  the  artificial  rub- 
ber leaves  on  evaporation  a  residue  which  agrees  in  all  char- 
acters with  a  similar  preparation  from  Para  rubber.  The 
artificial  rubber  unites  with  sulphur  in  the  same  way  as 
ordinary  rubber,  forming  a  tough  elastic  compound. 

Naturally,  if  synthetic  rubber  is  to  become  an  article  of 
commerce  and  compete  with  Para  or  plantation  rubber,  a 
cheaper  and  more  abundant  raw  material  than  turpentine 
had  to  be  found.  The  Germans  through  their  great  Badi- 
sche  Anilm  wnd  Soda  Fabrik  worked  out  a  method  for  con- 
verting certain  fractions  of  petroleum  distillation  into  iso- 
prene and  at  the  International  Congress  of  Applied  Chem- 
istry, held  in  New  York  in  1912,  they  exhibited  a  huge  slab 
of  synthetic  rubber  as  well  as  automobile  tires  made  from 
it.  There  have  also  been  stories  told  that  ways  have  been 
discovered  for  converting  potato  and  other  cheap  vege- 
table starches  into  isoprene.  If  this  is  true,  the  great  auto- 
mobile industry  may  find  itself  in  the  not  distant  future 
indebted  to  the  humble  potato. 


76  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

This  is  a  wonderful  field  of  research,  and  perhaps  enough 
has  been  said  to  show  that  a  research  chemist's  work  is  like 
a  fascinating  play.  Perhaps  this  is  why  the  American  public 
rewards  the  chemist  so  stingily,  feeling  that  the  work  is  its 
own  reward  and  that  the  chemist  does  not  need  to  eat.  As 
Pope  has  put  it  in  his  Essay  on  Man : 4  "The  starving 
chemist  in  his  golden  views  supremely  blest." 

4  Essay  on  Man,  ii,  269. 


CHAPTER    IV 

CHEMISTRY  AND  WAR 

AT  the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science  in  1898,  Sir  William  Crookes  in 
the  presidential  address  gave  emphatic  utterance  to  a  warn- 
ing on  the  world's  food  problem.  He  held  that  there  was  not 
enough  fixed  nitrogen  available  in  the  nitrate  beds  of  Chile 
to  supply  the  wheat  and  other  grains  which  the  populations 
of  the  future  would  require.  As  a  well  known  scientific  writer 
has  expressed  it :  x 

William  Crookes'  disquieting  message  of  rapidly  ap- 
proaching nitrogen  starvation  did  not  cause  much  worry  to 
politicians,  they  seldom  look  so  far  ahead  into  the  future. 
But  to  the  men  of  science  it  rang  like  a  reproach  to  the 
human  race. 

In  spite  of  this  statement,  the  politicians  and  militarists 
of  Germany  had  been  for  many  years  very  keenly  aware 
that  as  long  as  the  world's  supply  of  fixed  nitrogen  was 
confined  to  the  western  coast  of  South  America,  no  nation 
or  group  of  nations  who  did  not  control  the  sea  could  hope 
to  succeed  in  modern  warfare  either  in  offense  or  defense. 
At  the  time  of  the  Moroccan  dispute  between  Germany  and 
France  in  1911,  it  will  be  remembered  that  England  had 
established  an  entente  with  France,  and  the  stage  seemed  set 
for  war.  The  crisis  passed,  however,  and  men  everywhere 

1 L.  H.  Baekeland,  Chandler  Lecture,  1914. 

77 


78  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

said  that  war  between  the  great  nations  had  become  im- 
possible on  account  of  the  vastness  of  the  scale  on  which  it 
would  have  to  be  waged.  It  was  further  stated  that  the 
great  banking  interests  of  the  nations  had  met  and  pro- 
nounced the  impossibility  of  financing  modern  warfare.  Thus 
were  men's  minds  gradually  lulled  to  sleep  again  so  that  pre- 
paredness for  national  defense  among  the  English  speaking 
peoples  became  a  jest  and  a  reproach.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
in  1911  the  dogs  of  war,  though  straining  at  their  collars, 
were  held  in  leash  simply  because  the  great  German  chem- 
ists were  obliged  to  notify  their  government  that  their  re- 
searches and  plans  for  the  fixation  of  atmospheric  nitrogen, 
although  approaching  their  fulfillment  were  as  yet  incom- 
plete. 

Let  us  see  what  evidence  exists  to  justify  the  above  state- 
ments. In  September  of  1912,  one  year  after  the  Agadir 
incident  at  Morocco,  the  triennial  meeting  of  the  Interna- 
tional Congress  of  Applied  Chemistry  was  held  in  New  York. 
At  this  meeting  one  of  the  official  German  delegates,  Prof. 
H.  A.  Bernthsen,  in  the  course  of  his  address,  said : 

I  propose,  however,  today  to  deal,  from  my  own  direct 
experience,  with  the  development  of  the  problem  for  the 
synthetical  manufacture  of  ammonia  from  its  elements.  A 
few  years  ago  the  solution  of  this  problem  appeared  to  be 
absolutely  impossible.  It  has  recently  been  the  object  of 
very  painstaking  investigations  by  Prof.  Haber  and  the 
chemists  of  the  Badische  Anilin  und  Soda-Fabrik,  and 
numerous  patents  have  been  taken  out  with  reference  to  the 
manufacture.  Apart  from  what  is  already  published  in  this 
way,  however,  we  have  refrained  from  any  other  announce- 
ments until  we  were  in  a  position  to  report  something  final 
ivith  reference  to  the  solution  of  the  technical  question.  This 
moment  has  now  arrived,  and  I  am  in  the  agreeable  position 
of  being  able  to  inform  you  that  the  said  problem  has  now 
been  solved  fully  on  a  manufacturing  scale,  and  that  the 


Chemistry  and  War  79 

walls  of  our  first  factory  for  synthetic  ammonia  are  already 
rising  above  the  ground  at  Appau,  near  Ludwigshafen-on- 
Rhine. 

This  statement  was  received  with  applause  by  British  and 
American  scientists  (save  the  mark). 

The  walls  of  that  first  factory  that  were  rising  above  the 
ground  in  1912  had  risen  to  great  heights  by  1914  and  the 
whisper  went  forth  in  Germany  that  the  chemists  were  ready. 
"Der  Tag"  had  arrived.  But  to  quote  Dr.  Baekeland 
again : 2 

Do  not  reproach  chemistry  with  the  fact  that  nitrocellul- 
ose, of  which  the  first  application  was  to  heal  wounds  and  to 
advance  the  art  of  photography  was  stolen  away  from  these 
ultra  pacific  purposes  for  making  smokeless  powder  and  for 
loading  torpedoes.  Do  not  curse  the  chemist  when  phenol 
which  revolutionized  surgery,  turned  from  a  blessing  to  hu- 
manity into  a  fearful  explosive  after  it  had  been  discovered 
that  nitration  changes  it  into  picric  acid.  Let  us  hope  in 
the  meantime  that  war  carried  to  its  modern  logical  grue- 
someness,  shorn  of  all  its  false  glamor,  deceptive  picturesque- 
ness  and  rhetorical  bombast,  exposed  in  all  the  nakedness  of 
its  nasty  horrors,  may  hurry  along  the  day  when  we  shall 
be  compelled  to  accept  means  for  avoiding  its  repetition. 

The  various  methods  which  have  been  worked  out  in  Ger- 
many and  elsewhere  for  fixing  the  nitrogen  of  the  air  may 
be  grouped  in  three  classes.  (1)  Those  which  seek  to  com- 
bine nitrogen  with  oxygen  directly  by  means  of  powerful 
electric  sparks  and  arcs,  the  electrical  energy  to  produce 
which  must  usually  be  derived  from  extensive  and  expensive 
water  powers.  At  these  so-called  hydroelectric  plants  nitric 
acid  and  nitrates  may  be  directly  synthesized.  (&)  Those 
which  catalytically  combine  nitrogen  and  hydrogen  to  form 

aL.  H.  Baekeland,  address  before  Am.  Chem.  Soc.,  Seattle,  Wash., 
1915. 


80  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

ammonia,  which  may  then  be  further  oxidized  to  nitric  acid, 
and  (3)  those  processes  which  combine  nitrogen  with  carbon 
to  form  cyanogen  (CN)  or  cyanamid  (CN2)  which  yield 
by  suitable  treatment  ammonia  and  hence  nitric  acid  and 
nitrates.  Before  any  person  unfamiliar  with  chemical  tech- 
nology can  understand  all  that  is  involved  in  the  subject 
of  the  fixation  of  atmospheric  nitrogen,  it  will  be  necessary 
to  learn  something  of  the  nature  and  character  of  this 
gaseous  element  which  constantly  surrounds  us  in  the  air 
we  breathe,  but  which  no  man  has  ever  seen  except  when  it 
has  been  artificially  liquified  under  the  action  of  intense 
cold  at  high  pressures.  In  1916  the  author  presented  a 
paper  before  The  Franklin  Institute 3  on  The  Role  of 
Chemistry  m  the  War.  This  paper  received  the  honor  of 
being  promptly  reprinted  by  special  enactment  of  the 
United  States  Senate  as  Senate  Document  No.  340.  To 
avoid  repetition,  a  few  paragraphs  from  this  paper  are 
quoted : 

The  human  race  is  living  at  the  bottom  of  an  ocean  of 
atmosphere  some  six  to  seven  miles  deep.  Although  it  is  not 
always  realized  by  the  unscientific  mind,  this  aerial  sea  has 
weight  and  exerts  a  pressure  upon  all  bodies  of  approxi- 
mately 15  pounds  to  the  square  inch.  Roughly  speaking, 
and  disregarding  a  small  amount  of  rare  gases  and  impuri- 
ties, the  air  consists  of  about  one-fifth  oxygen  and  four-fifths 
of  the  inert  gas  nitrogen. 

Every  intelligent  person  knows  that  oxygen  is  the  breath 
of  life,  and  that  nitrogen  serves  the  purpose  of  just  suffi- 
ciently diluting  the  oxygen  so  that  the  combustion  of  waste 
carbon  conveyed  by  the  blood  to  the  body  tissues  goes  on 
at  the  steady  rate  which  conforms  to  the  life  processes  of 
all  animals.  With  this  general  knowledge  in  regard  to  the 
element  nitrogen,  the  ordinary,  well-informed,  non-technical 
man  rests  content. 

9  Jour.  Franklm  Inst.,  Feb.  1916. 


Chemistry  cmd  War  81 

Educated  people  are,  of  course,  aware  that  fixed  nitrogen 
in  combination  with  carbon,  hydrogen,  and  some  few  other 
minor  elements  is  built  up  by  vegetable  life  and  is  in  turn,  as- 
similated into  the  bodies  of  animals,  thus  supplying  our  food 
of  almost  every  variety.  It  is  also  fairly  well  understood 
that  in  the  processes  of  digestion  the  complex  nitrogenous 
bodies  built  up  by  plant  life  are  broken  down  to  simpler 
forms,  in  part  supplying  animal  life  energy  and  in  part  being 
voided  by  the  animal,  the  manurial  nitrogen  products  going 
back  to  the  soil,  thus  completing  what  is  known  as  the 
nitrogen  cycle,  caught  in  the  wheel  of  which  all  material  life, 
including  the  much-vaunted  culture  and  progress  of  modern 
civilization,  hangs  suspended. 

One  thing  that  is  not  very  generally  apprehended  by  edu- 
cated people,  however,  is  that  without  fixed  nitrogen  in 
great  abundance  mankind  could  not  wage  war  upon  one  an- 
other under  modern  conditions.  Ever  since  gunpowder  re- 
placed the  bow  and  arrow,  fixed  nitrogen  has  been  used  by 
man  to  hurl  destructive  missiles  at  his  adversaries.  In  fact, 
it  should  be  stated  that  no  explosive  substance  has  ever  been 
used  in  peace  or  war,  which  did  not  depend  for  its  activity 
on  the  extraordinary  properties  of  the  element  nitrogen, 
which,  as  the  major  constituent  of  the  air  we  breathe,  could 
almost  be  said  to  content  itself  with  the  inert  and  pacific 
role  of  toning  down  the  activities  of  its  restless  neighbor, 
oxygen. 

It  becomes  evident,  from  what  has  been  said,  that  there 
must  be  some  vital  and  important  difference  in  character  or 
quality  between  what  may  be  termed  fixed  and  unfixed 
nitrogen.  In  other  words,  it  should  be  understood  that  all 
life  and  phenomenal  existence,  on  this  planet  at  least,  depend 
upon  the  simple  fact  that  the  element  nitrogen  is  able  to 
assume  two  roles,  in  one  of  which  it  is  unfixed,  inert,  sluggish, 
and  slow  to  enter  into  combination  with  other  elements,  and 
in  the  other  of  which  it  is  active,  reactive,  restless,  ever  ready 
to  break  down  into  new  combinations,  absorbing  and  giving 
out  enormous  energy  as  the  restless  changes  take  place, 
whether  the  changes  take  place  in  a  measured  and  orderly 
fashion,  as  in  plant-cell  growth  and  animal  digestion,  or 


88  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

with  the  most  sudden  and  terrible  violence,  as  in  the  case  of 
high  explosives,  the  energies  either  absorbed  or  released  are 
equally  potent  and  measurable.  The  celebrated  chemist 
Berzelius  once  said  of  the  element  nitrogen  as  it  occurs  in 
the  air,  "It  is  difficult  to  recognize  by  any  conspicuous  prop- 
erty, but  can  only  be  recognized  by  means  of  properties 
which  it  does  not  possess." 

Before  pursuing  our  subject  further  it  will  be  necessary 
to  make  quite  clear  what  is  meant  by  inert,  unfixed  nitrogen 
and  active  or  fixed  nitrogen.  This  explanation  must  be 
made  in  such  a  way  that  all  apparent  contradictions  will 
immediately  disappear.  Gaseous  nitrogen  as  it  exists  in 
the  atmosphere  has  been  proved  by  scientific  methods  to  con- 
sist of  a  molecule  made  up  of  two  atoms  bound  together  by 
the  equivalent  of  three  bonds  of  affinity.  What  is  meant  is 
made  clearer  if  we  write  a  sort  of  alphabetical  expression  of 
*he  inert  nitrogen  molecule,  as  follows: 


It  should  not  be  supposed  that  the  three  bonds  are  ac- 
tually arms  or  linkages  holding  the  atoms  together;  they 
simply  represent  actually  existent  atomic  forces,  so  that  we 
may  say  that  the  element  nitrogen  is  trivalent.  In  the  same 
way  we  know  that  the  element  hydrogen  is  univalent,  and  we 
may  express  this  by  writing  H  —  H,  for  the  molecule  of 
hydrogen  is  also  known  to  be  diatomic. 

Now,  suppose  that  by  some  means  it  is  desired  to  com- 
bine or  fix  nitrogen  to  hydrogen  ;  it  is  at  once  apparent  that 
we  should  have  to  expend  energy  to  tear  apart  the  molecular 
bonds  before  we  can  fix  the  two  elements  together.  In  other 
words,  the  N'  =  N  would  have  to  pass  through  the  condition 
N=  and  =  -N.  Similarly?  the  H  —  H  would  have  to  split  up 
into  H  —  and  —  H.  Subsequently  the  two  elements  might 
combine  to  form  ammonia: 

—  H 
N—  H 

—  H 

For  the  purpose  of  this  paper  it  is  not  necessary  to  go 


Chemistry  and  War  83 

deeper  into  the  combining  valences  of  the  different  elements 
which  it  will  be  necessary  to  discuss.  Only  the  simplest  com- 
bination of  nitrogen  and  hydrogen,  viz.,  ammonia,  has  been 
mentioned  in  order  to  show  the  difference  between  fixed 
nitrogen  and  the  inert  or  unfixed  state  of  this  gas  as  it 
exists  in  the  air,  with  all  its  chemical  affinities  self-satisfied; 
in  short,  in  the  condition  N  =  N.  If,  however,  this  union  is 
torn  apart,  N-=  is  in  an  actively  unsatisfied  state  and  is 
prepared  to  fix  itself  into  myriads  of  combinations  with 
other  elements.  In  other  words,  the  molecule  of  nitrogen  is 
quiet  and  well  behaved,  whereas  the  free  atom  of  nitrogen 
is  dynamically  and  even,  in  some  combinations,  very  terribly 
reactive.  It  is  this  underlying  chemical  fact  that  has  en- 
abled men  to  slaughter  and  destroy  each  other  on  the 
gigantic  scale  now  being  demonstrated. 

Those  who  have  followed  this  explanation  will  readily  see 
that  it  is  not  possible  to  maintain  nitrogen  in  the  condition 
of  free  unsatisfied  atoms  N=,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
these  atoms  would  return  to  the  stable,  quiescent  molecule 
(N  =  N),  possibly  with  explosive  energy.  In  order  to  take 
advantage  of  the  reactive  condition,  it  is  necessary  to  lightly 
fix  the  nitrogen  atom  to  some  other  atoms  or  groups  of 
atoms  in  such  a  manner  or  in  such  a  combination  that  the 
nitrogen  at  a  blow  can  be  suddenly  released.  Let  us  take 
the  simplest  example  of  what  is  meant.  By  an  experiment 
so  simple  that  the  merest  tyro  in  chemistry  can  perform  it, 
ammonia  can  be  made  to  react  with  the  univalent  element 
iodine  to  form  the  compound  known  as  nitrogen  iodide,  in 

-H 
which  iodine  is  made  to  replace  the  hydrogen,  so  that  N— 

— H 
—I 

becomes  N — I  .  Now,  this  nitrogen  iodide  is  a  brown  pow- 
der, which  when  carefully  dried,  will  remain  innocently 
enough,  resting  quietly  unchanged.  If,  however,  we  even  so 
much  as  tickle  this  brown  substance  with  a  feather,  or  even 
if  a  door  in  the  building  in  which  it  lies  is  rudely  slammed,  a 
terrible  detonating  explosion  will  occur,  and  the  air  will  be 
filled  with  the  stifling,  violet-colored  fumes  of  iodine.  A 


84*  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

quantity  of  this  powder  which  could  be  heaped  on  the  sur- 
face of  a  small  silver  coin  would  be  sufficient  to  wreck  every- 
thing in  its  neighborhood. 

Whence  this  extraordinary  energy  ?  The  thermodynamics 
of  this  and  similar  reactions  are  too  complicated  and  math- 
ematical to  discuss  here,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  atomic 
forces  at  work  in  the  sudden  liberation  of  free  nitrogen  and 
iodine  atoms,  and  their  instantaneous  rearrangement  into 
inert  molecules,  involve  enormous  energy  effects.  Of  course, 
nitrogen  iodide  is  too  treacherous  a  substance  to  be  used 
as  a  high  explosive,  for  in  the  dry  condition  the  merest  jar 
would  cause  it  to  detonate.  It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  it 
has  been  the  task  of  the  chemist  to  find  ways  of  locking 
nitrogen  to  other  elements  or  groups  of  elements,  with  the 
result  that  it  will  be  fixed  tightly  enough  so  that  premature 

/explosion  will  be  avoided,  but  not  so  tightly  but  that  it  can 
be  exploded  by  small  quantities  of  more  reactive  nitrogen 
compounds  made  up  in  the  form  of  percussion  caps  or 
detonators.  All  modern  high  explosives  are  just  such 
chemical  combinations  of  nitrogen  as  this,  and  we  have, 
among  others,  nitro-glycerin  (dynamite),  nitrocellulose 
(guncotton),  trinitro-phenol  (picric  acid),  nitro gelatine, 
trinitro-benzene,  trinitro-toluene,  etc.  Masked  under  such 
trade  names  as  lyddite,  melinite,  turpenite,  cordite,  etc., 
these  nitrogen  compounds  are  products  of  modern  chemistry 
known  and  used  by  the  armies  and  navies  of  the  world. 

Now  that  we  have  learned  something  of  the  importance 
of  fixed  nitrogen  in  connection  with  the  food  problem  which 
is  always  with  us,  and  the  war  problem  which  has  passed, 
we  may  hope,  for  this  generation  if  not  forever,  let  us  see 
what  the  present  status  of  the  problem  is  as  far  as  our  own 
country  is  concerned.  In  Norway  where  hydroelectric 
power  is  abundant  and  requires  much  less  capital  to  develop 
than  with  us,  the  arc  processes  are  already  competing  with 
Chilean  saltpetre.  What  Germany  will  do  with  her  war 


Chemistry  and  War  85 

plants  in  the  future  remains  to  be  seen.4    For  ourselves,  we 
spent  millions  of  dollars  on  this  problem,  subsequent  to  our 
entry  into  the  war,  which  except  for  a  certain  value  in  ex- 
Synthetic  Nitrogen  in  Germany 

Lieut.  R.  E.  McConnell  has  recently  inspected  the  Haber  plant  at  the 
Oppau  works  of  the  Badische  Soda  u.  Anilin  Fabrik  near  Ludwigshafen 
on  the  Rhine.  As  the  Germans  raised  strong  objections  to  detailed  ex- 
amination, he  was  able  to  spend  only  three  days  at  the  factory  and 
was  not  permitted  to  view  the  plant  in  actual  operation.  During  the 
year  ended  Nov.  1,  1918,  this  plant  produced  90,000  long  tons  of  fixed 
nitrogen,  i.e.,  its  capacity  was  equal  to  one-fifth  of  the  total  three 
million  tons  of  nitrate  supplied  by  Chile  to  the  entire  world  during 
the  same  period,  and  ten  times  that  of  the  Haber  plant  installed  by  the 
United  States  Government  at  Sheffield,  Alabama.  If  to  this  output  be 
added  the  reported  production  of  125,000  tons  at  a  factory  near  Halle, 
the  combined  output  would  be  equal  to  one-half  that  of  the  total  supply 
from  Chile. 

It  has  been  officially  stated  in  the  Reichstag  that  400,000  tons  of 
combined  nitrogen  was  produced  in  Germany  in  1916.  However  this 
may  be,  it  seems  certain  that  Germany  is  capable  of  exporting  nitrogen- 
ous compounds  in  amounts  approximately  equal  to  her  pre-war  normal 
consumption  of  750,000  tons  of  Chilean  nitrate.  The  producing  ca- 
pacity of  the  Oppau  works  at  the  present  time  is  estimated  to  be: 

Tons  per  Tons  combined 

Oppau  Plant  annum  nitrogen  per  annum 

Ammonium   nitrate    ;...       10,000     3,450 

Sodium  nitrate    130,000     21,410 

Nitric  acid    (100%)    40,000     8,890 

Ammonia   (liquid)    40,000     32,900 

Total    4 66,650 

The  cost  of  the  plant  is  stated  to  have  been  between  5  and  10  million 
sterling;  today  a  similar  plant  in  the  United  States  would  cost  at  least 
£13,000,000,  says  the  "Journal  of  Industrial  and  Engineering  Chemistry." 
The  personnel  of  the  factory  comprises  1,500  laborers,  3,000  mechanics, 
350  clerks  and  300  chemists.  The  daily  consumption  of  fuel  is  1,750  tons 
of  lignite  and  500  tons  of  coke,  and  the  total  cost  per  diem  is  about 
£11,000,  including  allowances  for  depreciation,  etc.  Assuming  that  in 
normal  times  the  plant  would  be  shut  down  for  repairs,  etc.,  during 
one-tenth  of  the  year,  the  total  cost  would  be  £11,600,  and  the  output 
553,000  pounds  of  combined  nitrogen,  i.e.,  the  production  cost  would 
be  about  5y2d  per  pound,  equivalent  to  Chilean  nitrate  at  0.87d  per 
pound.  (The  latest  reported  price  of  the  latter  is  9s  per  quintal,  say 
Id  per  pound  in  Chile.)  If  all  the  ammonia  produced  were  con- 
verted into  100  per  cent  nitric  acid,  the  author^  concludes  that  the 
plant  could  produce  acid  at  a  cost  not  exceeding  3  cents  (iy2d)  per 
pound.  The  pre-war  cost  in  the  United  States  of  this  acid  made  from 
Chilean  nitrate  was  5-6  cents  per  pound  (Vy^d-Sti),  and  today  it  will 
be  considerably  higher.  Finally,  the  author  indicates  the  serious  con- 
sequences which  would  result  from  Germany  acquiring  a  monopoly  of 
these  nitrogen  compounds. — Drug  $  Chemical  Markets,  Nov.  19,  1919. 


86  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

perience,  have  been  so  far  almost  entirely  wasted.  The 
normal  imports  of  Chilean  nitrate  into  this  country  total 
nearly  600,000  tons  yearly,  yet  there  is  now  in  actual  opera- 
tion (January,  1920)  just  one  plant  for  the  fixation  of 
air  nitrogen,  and  this  has  a  maximum  production  of  less 
than  5000  tons  of  nitric  acid  per  year.  This  is  a  privately 
owned  plant  operating  on  the  arc  principle  of  fixation. 
Canada  has  an  extensive  plant  for  the  manufacture  of  cyan- 
amid,  as  have  also  Norway,  Germany,  Spain,  France,  Italy, 
Great  Britain,  and  Japan.5  For  ourselves,  let  us  hope  that 
no  untoward  destiny  will  ever  throw  us  into  conflict  with 
any  nation  or  group  of  nations  capable  of  gaining  control 
of  the  highways  by  land  or  sea,  that  lead  to  the  sources  of 
fixed  nitrogen.  If  that  day  arrives  in  advance  of  the  de- 
velopment of  our  own  adequate  processes  of  fixed  nitrogen 
supplies,  the  pangs  and  penalties  of  once  proud  Russia  will 
be  ours. 

The  element  carbon,  unlike  nitrogen,  does  not  appear  in 
nature  in  the  gaseous  form.  It  is  familiar  to  everyone  in 
an  impure  form  as  coal,  as  charcoal,  and  graphite,  and  in 
its  pure  crystallized  form  as  the  diamond.  Considered  as 
an  atom  in  its  chemical  sense  it  is  highly  reactive  and  ever 
ready  to  combine  with  other  atoms  and  groups  of  atoms 
to  form  the  endless  variety  of  organic  forms  which  make 
up  the  visible  universe.  The  most  characteristic  attribute 
of  the  carbon  atom  is  its  power  and  tendency  to  link  up 
with  other  carbon  atoms,  thus  permitting  an  infinite  variety 
of  molecular  architecture.  It  will  be  necessary  to  follow 
this  statement  a  little  further,  on  account  of  its  bearing  on 
the  role  of  chemistry  in  the  war. 

'The  present  status  of  this  important  development  of  chemistry 
and  chemical  engineering  is  too  detailed  for  insertion  at  this  place,  but 
for  those  who  are  interested  a  brief  report  as  of  January,  1920,  is 
printed  in  Appendix  A. 


Chemistry  and  War  87 

We  have  seen  that  the  free  atom  of  nitrogen  is  called 
trivalent  and  is  written  N=  .  Similarly,  the  free  atom  of 
carbon  is  known  to  be  quadrivalent  and  might  be  written 
C  =  .  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  quadrivalence  of 
the  carbon  atom  is  expressed  in  the  following  form: 

—  C— 

I 

Really  the  carbon  atom  with  its  four  bonds  is  thought  of 
spacially  as  being  at  the  center  of  a  pyramid  or  tetrahedron. 
For  our  present  purpose,  however,  we  need  not  confuse  our- 
selves with  this  conception,  but  think  of  it  as  written  above. 
The  point  to  be  understood  is  that  the  free  affinities  of  the 
carbon  atom  are  easily  saturated  with  other  atoms  or  groups 
of  atoms,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  following  compounds  : 
H  H  Cl  Cl 

H—C-H  H—  C—  OH  Cl—  C-C1  Cl—  C—  H 


Marsh  gas  (methane)          Methyl  alcohol         Carbon  tetrachlorlde  Chloroform 

But  the  most  interesting  characteristic  is  the  ability  of 

I    I  III 

carbon  to  link  up  as  in  —  C  —  C  —  and  —  C  —  C  —  C  —  and 

1    I  Ml 

so  on  until  we  reach  a  string  or  nucleus  of  six  atoms,  when 
in  many  cases  the  string  acts  as  though  it  were  unwieldly 
and,  like  a  snake  with  its  tail  in  its  mouth,  links  up  into 
form  of  a  ring  known  as  the  benzene  ring,  and  written: 

A 


or  further  into  double 
c__        or  even  triple  rings       _(j        fl 

\c/ 
I  I      I 


88  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

It  may  appear  to  the  layman  that  we  are  involving  our- 
selves pretty  deeply  in  advanced  chemistry,  but  we  must 
be  patient,  because  we  are  getting  close  to  the  secret  of 
modern  warfare  as  it  is  controlled  by  high  explosives.  We 
are  also  getting  close  to  the  secrets  of  the  dye  industry  and 
modern  medicinals,  which  subjects  have  been  much  dis- 
cussed in  this  country  since  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 

Benzene  has  already  been  referred  to  in  an  earlier  para- 
graph as  a  by-product  of  the  coke  and  gas  industry.  It 
is  a  limpid  liquid  substance  which  closely  resembles  gasoline 
in  odor  and  properties.  If  cheap  enough,  it  could  be  used 
in  automobile  engines,  but  its  price  before  the  war  in  this 
country  was  about  30  cents  a  gallon,  which  was  prohibitive 
of  its  use  for  this  purpose.  It  is  an  important  raw  material 
for  the  manufacture  of  high  explosives,  dyes,  synthetic  medi- 
cines, phonographic  records,  etc.  Benzene  has  the  chemical 
formula  C6H6,  and  is  to  be  considered  as  a  ring  of  six  carbon 
atoms  attached  as  shown  above,  with  one  hydrogen  atom 
fixed  to  each  carbon.  For  the  sake  of  brevity  and  simplicity, 
chemists  no  longer  take  the  trouble  to  write  in  the  carbon  or 
hydrogen  atoms  into  their  ring  formulae,  these  being  assumed, 
only  the  significant  substituting  atoms  being  placed  and 
written  in.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  benzene,  or,  as  the  Ger- 
mans call  it,  the  benzol  ring,  is  expressed  by  writing: 

H 

A 

instead  of  the  more       H  —  C  C  —  H 

cumbersome  H_| 

\o/ 


Now,  suppose  by  treating  benzene  with  certain  chemicals 


Chemistry  cmd  War  89 

we  replace  one  of  the  hydrogens  by  the  group  of  atoms 
OH,  we  get 


This  body  is  carbolic  acid,  known  to  chemists  as  phenol. 
It  was  this  substance  that  we  have  read  in  the  newspapers 
Thomas  A.  Edison  needed  for  making  phonograph  records 
after  the  German  supplies  ceased,  and  which  he  was  able  to 
make  as  soon  as  the  recovered  benzene  began  to  be  available 
from  the  American  gas  and  coke  plants.  Now,  if  we  start 
again  with  phenol  and  treat  it  with  nitric  acid  in  a  special 
manner,  we  make  trinitro-phenol,  or  picric  acid,  an  intensely 
yellow  substance  which  is  used  as  a  dye  base  and  is  also  one 
of  the  most  deadly  of  the  high  explosives.  We  write  the 
formula  of  picric  acid 

OH 
NO/NIK). 


and  designate  it  as  a  2,  4,  6  substitution  product,  for  the 
group  or  radical  NO2  must  fix  to  just  the  right  points  in 
the  carbon  ring,  or  we  should  not  get  picric  acid,  but  some- 
thing else.  Perhaps  we  have  now  succeeded  in  getting  a 
glimpse  into  the  wonderful  molecular  architecture  that  has 
been  patiently  worked  out  by  chemists  for  the  use  of  man 
in  the  arts  of  peace  and  war.  Untold  numbers  of  tons  of 
picric-acid  mixtures  under  the  names  of  melinite  and  tur- 
penite  were  shot  off  on  the  European  battlefields. 

Looking  at  the  graphic  representation  of  the  picric-acid 


90  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

molecule  written  above,  it  requires  but  a  slight  effort  of  the 
imagination  to  picture  what  takes  place  when  this  molecule 
is  suddenly  shattered  into  its  elements.  Large  quantities  of 
hot  nitrogen,  hydrogen,  and  oxygen  atoms  are  instantly  set 
free,  seeking  to  expand  and  satisfy  their  various  affinities. 
The  chemical  forces  of  disruption  and  rearrangement  are 
titanic  and  when  directed  to  that  end  scatter  death  and  de- 
struction round  about. 

Picric  acid,  when  dry,  melts  down  quietly  at  a  little  above 
the  water-boiling  temperature,  with  little  danger  of  ex- 
plosion unless  it  is  detonated  by  something  else.  It  is  usually 
melted  down  with  rosin  or  some  other  body  which  is  used 
to  dilute  it.  It  is  these  other  bodies  which  are  partly  re- 
sponsible for  the  dense  clouds  of  black  smoke  formed  when 
shells  loaded  with  picric-acid  mixtures  explode,  and  which 
on  the  European  battlefields  have  earned  for  them  the  name 
of  "Jack  Johnsons." 

Toluene  is  a  near  relative  of  benzene ;  it  is  a  liquid  slightly 
less  volatile  than  the  latter  substance,  and  is  also  a  by- 
product of  the  coke  and  gas  industry.  From  it  we  can  ob- 
tain trinitro-toluene — 


This  product  is  also  used  as  a  modern  high  explosive,  under 
the  abbreviated  name  of  T.N.T. 

Chemistry  has  made  other  contributions  to  the  art  of 
war  beside  those  comprised  in  the  coal  tar  industries  and 
nitrogen  fixation.  Reference  must  be  made  to  the  use  of 
poison  gases  which  did  such  dire  havoc  on  the  battlefields 
of  France.  Started  by  the  Germans  with  the  simple  elemen- 


Chemistry  and  War  91 

tary  corrosive  gases,  chlorine  and  bromine,  the  ingenuity 
of  the  chemists  of  all  the  world  was  quickly  taxed  to  de- 
velop this  deadly  and  inhuman  warfare  both  in  offense  and 
defense.  Most  of  the  poison  gases  were  not  new  discoveries, 
but  were  organic  compounds  of  variously  complex  nature 
already  well  known  to  chemistry.  The  problem  was  one 
rather  of  chemical  engineering  to  devise  ways  and  means  of 
large  scale  preparation,  shipping  and  loading  such  danger- 
ous substances  without  injury  to  those  engaged  in  their 
manufacture  and  handling.  The  famous  so-called  mustard 
gas  which  produced  such  terrible  suffering  was  in  no  way 
related  to  mustard  but  was  a  coal  tar  product  of  a  com- 
plicated molecular  structure.  There  is  a  well  known  group 
of  organic  compounds  in  which  the  poisonous  element  arsenic 
replaces  some  of  the  hydrogens  in  the  molecular  configura- 
tions. These  so-called  kakodyl  and  their  allied  compounds 
produce  gases  which  are  first  nauseating  and  then  fatal  when 
inhaled,  and  these  as  well  as  others  equally  deadly  were  being 
secretly  developed  by  chemists  everywhere  when  by  good 
fortune  or  by  design,  just  as  one  may  prefer  to  believe,  the 
great  war  came  to  its  sudden  end  at  the  eleventh  hour  in. 
1918.  Had  the  war  continued  for  even  a  brief  space  longer,  \ 
the  civilized  nations,  through  the  prostitution  of  the  won- 
ders of  chemistry,  would  have  drenched  each  other  in  poison- 
ous gases  which  would  have  reached  the  innocent  with  the 
guilty  and  in  very  truth  have  visited  the  sins  of  the  fathers  / 
upon  the  children.  As  it  was,  race  suicide,  after  the  de- 
struction of  ten  million  men,  was  halted  just  in  time.6 

6  For  the  benefit  of  those  who  may  be  interested  in  the  chemistry  of 
the  poison  gases  which  were  used  in  quantity  during  the  war  the 
following  list  with  the  chemical  names  and  formulae  is  appended: 

Chlorine.    First  gas  used  by  the  Germans. 

Phosgene.    Carbonyl  Chloride  (COC12).    Lung  irritant. 

Mustard  Gas.     Dichlordiethyl  sulphide    (CH2C1CH2)2S.     Blister  Gas. 


9£  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

It  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  the  destructive  aspects  of 
modern  chemistry  to  the  more  merciful  and  constructive  pur- 
poses designed  to  meet  and  defend  against  the  attack  of 
shot  and  shell  and  gas.  When  the  Germans  first  launched 
their  chlorine  gas  clouds  against  the  British  before  Mons, 
there  was  no  defense  known.  Rags  torn  from  clothing, 
soaked  in  the  filthiest  water  immediately  obtainable  and  tied 
about  the  men's  faces  provided  but  inadequate  defense 
against  this  new  terror.  Why  the  Germans  did  not  march 
on  to  Calais  following  their  gas  clouds  and  thus  attempt 
to  force  an  early  victory,  God  alone  knows,  for  history  has 
not  told  us.  For  a  number  of  years  previous  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  scientists  and  engineers  had  been  studying  safety 
in  coal  mining  operations,  and  gas  masks  to  be  used  by 
rescuing  parties  in  mines  had  already  been  experimented 
with.  This  new  menace  of  war  made  a  sudden  call  not  only 
for  new  forms  of  masks  but  for  new  chemical  absorbents  to 
be  used  in  them.  There  were  well  known  absorbents  such  as 
soda-lime,. which  would  take  care  of  chlorine  and  bromine, 
but  which  were  quite  useless  against  the  various  new  organic 
poisons  which  the  German  chemists  were  constantly  sending 
forward.  It  had  long  been  known  that  charcoal  powder  had 
the  power  to  some  extent  of  absorbing  bad  odors  from 
vitiated  air.  Now  bad  odors  are  usually  due  to  large  com- 
plex organic  molecules  as  distinguished  from  the  smaller 
diatomic  molecules  of  nitrogen  and  oxygen,  of  which  pure 
air  is  composed.  Charcoal  is  a  substance  so  finely  porous 
that  even  when  it  is  powdered  the  tiny  particles  are  them- 
selves full  of  submicroscopic  pores  just  as  a  microscopic 

Chlorpicrin  Tear  Gas.  Nitro  trichloro-methane  (CC13NO2).  Vomiting 
Gas. 

Sneeze  Gas.     Diphenyl  chlorarsine  (C6H5)2  AsCl.     Smoke  Gas. 

The  latter  substance  is  not  a  true  gas  but  is  used  as  a  smoke  designed 
to  penetrate  the  protective  gas-mask. 


Chemistry  and  War  93 

sponge  would  be.  This  fine  open  structure  has  been  scientif- 
ically referred  to  as  a  mycellian  web.  It  seems  that  whereas 
the  small  molecules  of  the  simple  gases  can  move  readily  in 
and  out  and  through  this  web,  the  larger  molecules  of  odorif- 
erous gases  become  entangled  and  caught.  These  molecules, 
of  course,  do  not  come  to  rest,  for  molecules  are  never  quiet 
except  at  the  absolute  zero  temperature,  but  they  may  be 
thought  of  roughly  as  like  a  multitude  of  angry  spinning 
buzzing  flies  caught  in  a  tangle  of  spiders'  webs. 

There  is  a  far-reaching  literature  on  the  absorptive  power 
of  various  charcoals  for  gases  which  goes  back  to  the  early 
days  of  Priestley.  It  is  curious  that  this  extraordinary 
property  found  little  or  no  use  in  the  service  of  mankind 
until  the  emergency  of  the  German  gas  attack  in  1914.  In 
1863  M.  A.  Hunter,  an  English  scientist,  had  already  pub- 
lished experiments  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine  which 
showed  that  the  charcoals  made  from  hard  woods  such  as 
ebony  and  from  nut-shells  greatly  exceeded  in  absorptive 
power  that  of  ordinary  charcoals,  but  in  spite  of  the  ex- 
tended literature,  the  subject  attracted  little  attention 
prior  to  the  war.  Those  who  are  interested  in  this  subject 
should  also  look  up  a  paper  by  Dr.  R.  Augus  Smith  printed 
in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1863  on  some 
important  experiments  on  the  absorption  of  gases  by  char- 
coal; also  a  paper  of  de  Saussure  communicated  to  the 
Geneva  Society  as  far  back  as  1812. 

Immediately  when  the  call  came  to  the  chemists  to  save 
the  men  on  the  battle  front  from  the  deadly  gases,  they  be- 
thought them  of  this  curious  property  of  charcoal,  which 
was  at  once  mixed  with  the  soda-lime  and  other  absorbent 
chemicals  placed  in  the  breathing  tanks  of  the  gas-masks. 
Experiments  soon  confirmed  the  claims  of  investigators  that 
the  denser  charcoal  made  from  cocoanut  shells  and  peach 


; 


94  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

stones  was  finer-poured  than  ordinary  wood  charcoals, 
and  therefore  a  much  more  effective  absorbent.  We  all 
remember  the  baskets  on  the  street  corners  of  our  great 
cities  during  the  war,  with  signs  upon  them  asking  the 
public  to  deposit  peach  stones  and  nut  shells  for  the 
protection  of  our  soldiers.  There  is  a  sequel  to  this 
story,  however,  which  is  even  more  interesting,  and  one 
that  we  may  justly  be  proud  of  as  a  distinct  contribu- 
tion of  American  chemistry.  It  was  found  that  shell  char- 
coal that  was  heated  in  a  muffle  to  a  high  temperature  in  the 
presence  of  superheated  steam  was  activated  so  that  it  would 
absorb  many  times  the  volume  of  heavy  gases  that  the  un- 
treated charcoal  could  hold.  This  activated  shell  charcoal 
will  take  up  about  its  own  weight  of  odoriferous  gases  and 
vapors,  and  so  vigorous  is  the  action  that  when  the  stream 
of  gas  is  rapid  the  charcoal  actually  becomes  so  hot  from 
the  molecular  struggle  that  the  hand  cannot  be  held  upon  a 
vessel  in  which  the  absorption  is  rapidly  taking  place.  It 
seems  almost  as  though  the  activated  charcoal  possessed  an 
attractive  force  for  heavy  gas  molecules,  just  as  a  magnet 
will  pick  up  iron  filings  and  hold  onto  them.  But  this  is 
not  the  case.  The  explanation  is  that  the  gas  molecules  in 
their  rapid  motions  in  every  direction  impinge  upon  and 
bombard  the  charcoal  particles,  whereupon  the  heavy,  large 
ones  are  entangled  while  the  lighter  and  smaller  ones  are 
unimpeded  and  are  free  to  move  on.  To  use  a  very  homely 
and  rather  rough  illustration,  we  have  only  to  think  of  a 
poultry  brooding  coop  in  which  the  little  chicks  are  free  to 
run  in  and  out  and  away,  while  the  nervous  and  excited 
mother  birds  are  forced  to  confine  their  motions  within  the 
meshes  which  hold  them  imprisoned. 

Furnished  with  a  gas  mask   containing  activated   char- 
coal, it  is  now  perfectly  safe  to  enter  an  atmosphere  laden 


Chemistry  and  War  95 

with  the  most  poisonous  gases  known  to  chemistry  or  that 
chemists  will  ever  be  able  to  devise.  It  is  probably  obvious 
to  even  a  layman  in  chemistry  that  this  miraculous  property 
of  charcoal  developed  under  the  exigency  of  hideous  war 
will  fill  many  a  useful  purpose  in  the  peaceful  arts.  The 
author  is  glad  to  be  able  to  report  that  a  number  of  well- 
known  chemists  have  been  working  in  this  field  of  investiga- 
tion since  1917  and  are  already  adapting  the  principle  to 
the  saving  and  recovery  of  valuable  gases  and  vapors  that 
result  from  certain  large  scale  manufacturing  operations 
and  which  heretofore  it  has  not  paid,  by  any  previously 
known  process,  to  collect  and  recover  from  the  air  with 
which  they  are  mixed. 

We  have  had  space  to  touch  only  some  of  the  high  spots 
in  the  relation  of  what  chemistry  has  done  for  war  —  both  in 
offense  and  defense^-but  we  cannot  leave  the  subject  until 
we  pay  some  attention  to  the  contributions  of  chemists  to 
the  alleviation  of  suffering  and  the  saving  of  life.  Gun 
shot  and  shell  wounds  on  the  battlefield,  which  would  not 
of  themselves  result  in  death,  by  infection  produce  tetanus 
and  gangrene  with  terribly  fatal  results.  Previous  to  the 
great  war  the  most  efficacious  first  aid  treatment  of  deep 
wounds  was  to  pour  into  them  tincture  of  iodine.  This  was 
a  heroic  and  most  painful  proceeding,  to  say  the  least,  and 
was  accompanied  by  undesirable  surgical  complications.  It 
is  interesting  to  note  in  passing  that  the  Germans  began  an 
abnormally  large  importation  of  iodine,  which  is  extracted 
from  seaweed,  months  before  the  assassination  at  Sarajevo, 
which  is  generally  supposed  to  have  been  the  starting  point 
of  the  war.  In  the  early  days  after  the  outbreak  of  hos- 
tilities, the  famous  Dr.  Carrell  ^introduced  his  method  of 
irrigating  deep  wounds  with  a  watery  solution  of  hypocj 
rite,  which  had  the  effect  of  gradually  giving  olF  nascent 


96  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

(newborn)  atoms  of  chlorine  and  molecules  of  hyper  chlorous 
acid  which  kept  the  wound  surfaces  aseptic  without  burning 
the  torn  tissues  as  iodine  had  done.  This  was  a  great  step 
forward,  but  it  was  not  first  aid  and  could  only  be  applied 
to  those  cases  which  survived  to  reach  base  hospitals  where 
irrigating  apparatus  was  available.  To  pour  a  watery 
solution  into  wounds  is  not  efficacious,  as  the  action  of  the 
antiseptic  must  be  gradual  and  continuous.  If  a  substance 
could  be  found,  that  would  be  soluble  in  an  oily  medium  and 
would  do  all  that  the  watery  solution  of  hypochlorite  did, 
it  would  be  retained  by  the  wound.  Now  we  have  already 
learned  in  a  previous  chapter  that  the  derivative  of  coal  tar 
known  as  toluene,  when  treated  with  nitric  acid  forms  the 
great  staple  high  explosive,  trinitrotoluene,  T.N.T.  With 
nitrated  toluene  wounds  are  inflicted,  and  now  the  chemical 
wonder  grows,  for  from  practically  the  same  starting  point 
we  proceed  to  cure  them.  Nitrated  toluene,  properly  treated 
with  a  so-called  reducing  agent,  will  substitute  hydrogen 
for  the  oxygen  fixed  to  the  nitrogen  in  the  molecule.  This 
leads  to  an  organic  molecule  known  as  an  amine.  If  this  is 
treated  with  chlorine  in  a  special  manrier7"we~gel  dichlora- 
mine  T  which  is  soluble  in  antiseptic  oils  such  as  chlorinated 
eucalyptus  or  paraffin.  With  this  material  we  are  told  that 
Dr.  Dakin  and  his  associates  have  not  only  revolutionized 
the  treatment  of  deep  wounds  but  have  opened  up  a  new 
field  in  the  asepsis  of  dental,  nasal,  and  bronchial  complica- 
tions. 

So  much  for  some  of  the  important  things  chemistry  has 
done  for  man  under  the  stimulation  of  war.  We  must  now 
give  attention  to  some  of  the  aspects  of  chemical  research 
which  the  recent  great  war  has  helped  to  bring  more  promi- 
nently before  us. 


Chemistry  and  War  97 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  food  problems  of  the 
future  as  affected  by  chemistry  through  the  fixation  of 
nitrogen.  The  three  great  staple  plant  foods  are  fixed 
nitrogen,  phosphates,  and  potash.  This  is  revealed  by  the 
fact  that  the  ashes  or  inorganic  portion  of  nearly  all  plants 
are  made  up  principally  of  these  constituents  together  with 
a  little  lime,  silica  and  traces  of  other  scattering  elements. 
This  country  is  rich  in  phosphate  rock  which  is  found  in 
great  quantity  in  Florida,  the  Carolinas,  and  Tennessee. 
Treated  with  sulphuric  acid,  this  phosphate  becomes  so- 
called  super-phosphate,  the  soluble  form  which  is  required 
by  intensive  agriculture.  Putting  fertilizer  on  the  soil  is 
very  similar  to  putting  money  in  the  bank,  we  may  place  it 
as  an  active  or  checking  deposit  and  draw  against  our 
account  for  current  use,  or  we  may  make  an  interest  bearing 
time  deposit  for  the  future.  This  principle  is  not  sufficiently 
recognized  in  this  country  where  the  tendency  is  to  use 
always  the  more  immediately  soluble  form  of  fertilizers, 
which  is  comparable  to  the  current  account  at  the  bank, 
which  instead  of  saving  against  the  rainy  day  permits  the 
rainy  day  to  literally  wash  away  a  goodly  portion  of  our 
investment  in  the  too  soluble  plant  foods  we  have  employed. 
Even  our  State  and  Federal  laws  which  are  supposed  to  be 
drawn  up  under  the  scientific  supervision  of  Departments  of 
Agriculture,  have  subscribed  to  this  tendency  by  making  it 
difficult  if  not  impossible  for  any  person  or  company  to  sell 
fertilizers  that  are  not  immediately  and  readily  soluble  in 
water  or  soil  solutions.  This  fact  applies  to  the  potash 
situation  as  well  as  to  the  phosphate,  and  in  a  much  more 
interesting  way  on  account  of  its  bearing  on  the  inter- 
national situation.  Just  as  the  world's  supply  of  fixed  nitro- 
gen exists  in  one  locality  in  Chile,  South  America,  the  world's 
supply  of  soluble  potash  salts  up  to  the  end  of  the  war  was 


98  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

exclusively  held  by  Germany  in  the  enormous  crude  potash 
deposits  of  Stassfurt  and  Alsace.  During  the  war  the  rest 
of  the  world  was  much  put  to  it  to  scratch  up  enough  of 
this  necessary  alkali  from  all  possible  sources,  while  the 
price  at  once  rose  from  about  $30  to  over  $400  per  ton  on 
the  unit  basis  used  in  marketing  potashes.  Our  own  neces- 
sary supplies  come  from  the  fractional  crystallization  of 
salt  brines  from  wells  and  lakes  in  the  Middle  and  Far  West, 
from  leached  hardwood  ashes,  from  the  giant  seaweeds  or 
kelp  of  the  Pacific  coast,  and  in  some  small  quantity  from 
the  New  Jersey  green  sands.  These  sudden  substitutions 
were  not  accomplished  without  much  upsetting  of  the  accus- 
tomed run  of  things  in  agriculture  and  industry.  Potash 
extracted  from  some  of  the  western  brines  was  found  to 
contain  borax  which  killed  many  thousands  of  dollars  worth 
of  potatoes  in  the  great  potato  growing  district  of  Aroos- 
took  County,  Maine,  during  1918-19.  Many  of  the  brine 
potashes  contained  bromides  so  that  the  potassium  chlorate 
made  from  them,  a  salt  absolutely  necessary  to  the  manu- 
facture of  matches  and  percussion  caps  in  ammunition,  was 
found  to  contain  bromate  and  did  not  do  its  work  as  it 
should  have  done,  at  a  very  serious  cost  in  money  and  effi- 
ciency, until  our  chemists  had  time  to  study  and  overcome 
these  perplexing  problems. 

America  still  has  no  adequate  supply  of  soluble  potash 
for  use  either  in  peace  or  war.  The  granitic  rocks  which 
form  the  geological  back-bone  of  our  eastern  and  western 
plateaus  are  made  up  principally  of  the  three  minerals, 
quartz  (silica),  feldspar,  and  mica.  The  two  latter  are 
potash  bearing  minerals,  although  naturally  the  potash  is 
locked  up  in  a  molecule  which  is  almost  insoluble  in  water. 
A  granite  mountain  in  New  Hampshire  or  in  Wyoming  may 
average  as  high  as  5  per  cent  potash.  In  one  ton,  or  about  a 


Chemistry  cmd  War  99 

wagonload,  of  this  rock  there  is  one  hundred  pounds  of 
potash.  In  a  million  tons  out  of  the  mountain  side  there  are 
a  hundred  million  pounds  of  potash.  In  the  mountains  from 
Maine  to  the  Carolinas  and  from  Wyoming  to  the  Gulfs 
there  are  many  great  dykes  of  potash  feldspar  and  the  allied 
minerals  leucocite  and  cerescite,  which  are  richer  in  potash 
than  the  matrix  granite.  Let  us  see  what  Nature  has  been 
doing  with  these  materials  for  her  uses  since  the  beginning 
of  organic  life  on  the  planet.  We  have  said  that  the  potash 
is  locked  up  in  an  insoluble  form  in  these  rocks,  but  this 
is  only  comparatively  true.  Under  the  action  of  water  and 
erosion,  the  mountains  are  gradually  disintegrated  and  the 
detritus  is  washed  down  into  the  valleys.  Then  graduall}7, 
by  the  chemical  actions  of  Nature,  the  potash  is  liberated 
and  seized  upon  by  the  growing  plant  life  to  be  stored  up  in 
the  organic  cells.  The  residue  left  after  this  natural  ex- 
traction forms  the  clay  beds  with  which  we  are  familiar. 
We  can  now  understand  why  Aroostook  County,  Maine,  in 
spite  of  its  most  northern  location,  with  its  late  spring  and 
early  winter,  was  for  many  years  the  richest  agricultural 
county  in  the  United  States,  for  it  is  nothing  but  a  pocket 
surrounded  by  granite  hills.  It  is  only  after  many  years 
of  intensive  potato  growing  that  this  valley  has  been  obliged 
to  import  soluble  potash  from  Germany  or  the  western 
brines,  for  the  potato  shares  with  tobacco  and  most  succu- 
lent crops  the  characteristic  of  being  a  voracious  potash 
feeder. 

Here,  then,  is  a  problem  for  the  United  States  to  work 
out  in  the  future.  It  cannot  be  that  this  vast  store  house 
of  potash  is  to  be  left  forever  unused  by  man.  The  chemists 
have  been  forehanded  with  this  problem  and  already  it  is 
worked  out  on  the  semi-commercial  stage  of  operation  and 
is  only  waiting  for  timid  capital  to  commercialize. 


100  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

Some  years  ago  a  considerable  number  of  tons  of  feldspar 
from  Maryland  and  Virginia  were  treated  by  a  process  de- 
vised by  the  author  and  Dr.  G.  W.  Coggeshall,  and  dis- 
tributed to  a  number  of  the  State  Agricultural  Experiment 
Stations,  as  well  as  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture. 
The  Director  of  the  Rhode  Island  Station 7  has  recently 
published  a  paper  showing  that  after  four  years  of  experi- 
ment the  so-called  American  Rock  Potash  produced  higher 
crop  yields  than  corresponding  plots  treated  with  equivalent 
quantities  of  the  soluble  German  potash  salts.  It  has  been 
our  boast  that  we  Americans  are  a  forward  and  an  enter- 
prizing  people  and  in  purely  mechanical  matters,  as  repre- 
sented in  the  manufacture  of  automobiles  by  the  thousands 
a  day,  this  is  true.  But  American  capital  has  never  yet 
properly  supported  the  chemists  of  America,  and  much  of 
all  that  has  been  done  in  this  country  in  these  lines  previous 
to  1917  was  done  by  Germans;  whether  they  possessed  na- 
turalization papers  or  not  is  quite  beside  the  mark. 

TThe  Maimrial  Value  of  a  Modification  of  Orthoclase-Bearing  Rock 
where  only  Potassium  was  Deficient,  by  Burt  L.  Hartwell.  Jour.  Amer. 
Soc.  of  Agronomy,  Vol.  II,  No.  8,  1919,  page  327. 


CHAPTER  V 

CHEMISTRY  AND  THE  FUTURE 

OUR  present  topic  is  chemistry  and  the  future.  And  what 
is  more  modern  and  holds  more  mysterious  promise  for 
the  future  than  the  phenomena  connected  with  the  dis- 
covery of  radium  and  radio-activity?  First  let  us  trace 
some  of  the  steps  that  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  magical 
element  radium,  and  then  we  will  look  into  the  subject  of  its 
properties  and  its  promise  for  the  future. 

The  discovery  of  radium  and  its  properties  really  traces 
back  indirectly  to  the  year  1785  when  Henry  Cavendish  was 
sparking  air  in  an  inverted  glass  U-tube,  as  related  in  a 
previous  chapter.  Cavendish's  irreducible  residuum  was  a 
century  later  discovered  by  Raleigh  and  Ramsay  to  be  the 
atmospheric  inert  gas  argon,1  and  this  quickly  led  on  to  the 
discovery  of  helium,  the  sun  element,  as  we  shall  pres- 
ently relate  when  we  come  to  this  story,  for  helium  is 
born  of  the  explosion  of  radium  atoms.  In  the  meantime, 
Sir  William  Crookes  was  studying  radiant  matter  through 
the  medium  of  highly  evacuated  glass  tubes  and  globes  into 
which  platinum  electrodes  were  fused  so  that  static  electric 
charges  could  be  made  to  pass  through  high  vacuo.  While 
experimenting  with  Crookes  tubes,  Roentgen,  a  German 
physicist,  in  1895,  accidentally  discovered  the  Roentgen  or 
X-rays.  These  rays,  it  soon  appeared,  emanated  from  the 

*See  page  42. 

101 


.102  .Chemistry  and  Civilization 

glass  walls  of  the  evacuated  globe  as  a  result  of  their  bom- 
bardment by  the  cathode  rays  which  streamed  off  the  elec- 
trode. These  mysterious  X-rays  find  ordinary  matter  as 
transparent  as  is  glass  to  light  rays,  and  only  the  heavy 
metals  and  minerals  are  practically  opaque  to  them.  The 
fact  that  flesh  and  blood  are  more  transparent  to  them 
than  the  bony  and  sinuous  structure  of  the  body  has  been 
of  incalculable  value  to  surgery,  although  the  author  re- 
members the  contempt  with  which  some  eminent  surgeons 
greeted  the  promise  of  Roentgen's  discovery  in  1895. 

Another  extraordinary  phenomenon  of  the  X-rays,  which 
led  to  the  discovery  of  radium,  was  their  power  to  make 
certain  crystalline  substances,  such  as  the  beautiful  platino- 
cyanide  of  barium  or  one  of  the  natural  sulphides  of  zinc, 
glow  with  a  greenish  light  whenever  X-rays  impinged  upon 
them.  This  phenomenon  led  Henri  Becquerel,  a  French 
physicist,  to  examine  the  radiations  from  all  minerals  which 
were  known  to  be  phosphorescent,  in  the  expectation  that  the 
faintly  luminous  rays  which  these  bodies  emit  might  con- 
tain penetrating  rays  similar  to  or  allied  with  Roentgen's 
X-rays. 

It  should  be  explained  that  when  we  say  that  a  mineral 
or  salt  or  any  other  body  is  phosphorescent,  we  do  not 
mean  that  it  necessarily  contains  the  element  phosphorus  in 
any  form,  but  merely  that  it  possesses  the  power  of  glowing 
in  the  dark,  either  spontaneously  or  as  the  result  of  fric- 
tion or  agitation.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  phosphorus  itself 
glows  in  the  dark,  due  to  its  slow  burning  or  oxidation  which 
really  phosphorescent  bodies  never  do.  Among  the  many 
phosphorescent  substances  which  came  under  Becquerel's 
observation  were  the  salts  of  the  heavy  element  uranium. 
The  method  of  experimentation  was  to  seal  up  photographic 
plates  in  black  paper  and  then  lay  the  substance  under  in- 


Chemistry  and  the  Future  103 

vestigation  on  top  of  the  protected  plate  and  by  subsequent 
development  in  the  dark  room,  determine  whether  any  pene- 
trating rays  had  affected  the  sensitive  film.  Some  substances, 
as  for  example  a  form  of  calcium  sulphide,  will  give  of? 
phosphorescent  light  after  exposure  to  sunlight,  but  the 
effect  is  evanescent  and  the  luminescence  soon  dies  out.  None 
of  these  substances  had  any  effect  on  BecquerePs  plates  but 
when  he  tried  uranium  compounds  he  was  surprised  to  find 
that  they  invariably  produced  an  intense  fogging  of  the 
plate  and  that  this  phenomenon  was  quite  independent  of 
whether  or  not  the  compound  had  previously  been  exposed 
to  sunlight  or  whether  or  not  it  gave  off  rays  visible  in  the 
dark.  Here  was  an  entirely  new  order  of  phenomena  for 
which  there  was  neither  precedent  nor  explanation. 

The  next  discovery  that  Becquerel  made  was  that  the 
rays  emitted  by  his  uranium  compounds  would  discharge 
the  electrified  gold-foil  leaves  of  an  electroscope  when 
brought  near  them.  This  could  mean  but  one  thing,  that 
the  new  radiation,  whatever  it  was,  had  the  power  of  render- 
ing the  air  surrounding  the  leaves  of  gold,  an  electrical 
conductor.  In  its  simplest  form,  an  electroscope  is  an  in- 
strument that  any  clever  schoolboy  can  easily  make  in  a 
few  minutes.  Two  little  leaves  of  gilder's  foil  are  attached, 
hanging  side  by  side,  to  the  bottom  of  a  brass  rod  which 
passes  through  a  cork  into  a  bottle  or  glass  tube.  If  a  bit 
of  vulcanite  or  amber  is  rubbed  on  the  coat  sleeve  and 
touched  for  an  instant  to  the  top  of  the  brass  rod  protruding 
from  the  bottle,  the  charge  of  static  electricity  will  at  once 
be  transmitted  to  the  hanging  gold  leaves  and,  since  bodies 
that  carry  charges  of  the  same  sign  repel  each  other,  the 
little  pendulous  gold  leaves  open  up  like  an  inverted  letter 
V.  The  leaves  will  remain  in  this  position  for  a  long  period 


104  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

when  the  air  in  the  bottle  is  dry,  but,  as  we  now  know,  if  a 
radio-active  body  approaches  within  a  measured  distance  of 
the  leaves,  they  will  drift  together  under  the  pull  of  gravity 
with  a  speed  or  rapidity  proportional  to  the  degree  of  radio- 
activity of  the  substance  under  examination.  If  a  little 
graduated  scale  and  focusing  lens  is  attached  to  the  instru- 
ment, the  observations  may  be  made  quantitative.  Armed 
with  just  such  a  simple  instrument,  Madame  Curie,  a  Polish 
woman,  and  her  husband,  Professor  Curie  of  the  Sorbonne  in 
Paris,  proceeded  to  explore  the  radio-activity  of  a  great 
number  of  minerals.  Following  up  Becquerel's  observations, 
it  was  soon  found  that  the  electrical  conductivity  of  the  air 
induced  by  the  rays  from  a  uranium  compound  varies  direct- 
ly with  the  amount  of  this  element  present  in  the  mineral. 
From  this  point  on  discovery  followed  discovery  with  such 
rapidity  that  science  held  its  breath  with  astonishment  and 
the  ultra-conservatives  who  always  behave  as  though  any 
new  knowledge  or  generalization  was  an  insult  to  past  learn- 
ing were  kept  busy  denying  anything  and  everything  and 
becoming  more  and  more,  metaphorically  speaking,  red  in 
the  face  as  announcement  after  announcement  came  from 
the  Curie  laboratory. 

Pitchblende  is  the  name  of  an  ore  of  uranium  which  is 
found  in  quantity  at  Joachimsthal  in  Bohemia,  and  speci- 
mens of  this  mineral  proved  to  be  2%  times  more  radio- 
active than  uranium  itself.  There  was  but  one  explanation 
and  this  was  that  associated  with  uranium  and  contained  in 
its  ores  there  was  an  unknown  radio-active  element.  Madame 
Curie  set  herself  the  task  of  working  out  this  problem. 

Neither  time  nor  space  will  permit  us  to  trace  the  chem- 
ical processes  followed  in  this  research,  but  in  the  end  not 
only  was  radium  isolated  and  studied  but  several  other  radio- 


Chemistry  and  the  Future  105 

active  elements  were  recognized  and  described.  As  the  re- 
sult of  Madame  Curie's  investigations  and  the  subsequent 
classic  researches  of  Professor  Rutherford,  we  now  know 
that  the  amount  of  radium  present  in  a  mineral  is  uniformly 
about  3.4  parts  in  every  10,000,000  parts  of  uranium  pres- 
ent. Since  uranium  ores  are  of  rare  occurrence  and  where 
found  contain  only  limited  percentages  of  uranium,  we  can 
easily  understand  how  scarce  and  costly  this  wonderful  ele- 
ment must  probably  remain.  And  perhaps  its  enforced 
rarity  is  a  fortunate  matter,  for  on  account  of  the  atomic 
energies  that  it  lets  loose,  an  ounce  of  radium  accumulated 
in  one  mass  would  be  a  most  dangerous  and  destructive 
material.  The  radium  atom  is  now  known  to  be  continually 
breaking  down  in  a  series  of  atomic  explosions  which  in 
common  with  all  explosions  liberates  very  sudden  energy. 
So  small  is  the  mass  of  an  atom,  however,  that  Rutherford 
has  calculated  that  one-half  of  a  given  mass  of  radium  is 
destroyed  in  about  1300  years. 

We  have  said  destroyed,  but  the  atoms  of  radium  explode 
into  several  products,  one  of  which  is  the  light  gas  helium, 
so  that  we  stand  face  to  face  with  the  ancient  dream  of  the 
transmutation  of  the  elements.  Perhaps  it  is  reserved  for 
science  in  the  future  to  learn  how  to  unlock  the  atomic 
forces  in  elements  more  abundant  than  radium.  If  that  day 
comes,  and  it  is  by  no  means  impossible,  humanity  will  face 
an  entirely  different  order  of  life  and  labor.  This  truth  of 
this  statement  is  brought  home  to  us  when  we  learn  that 
J.  J.  Thomson,  the  eminent  mathematical  physicist,  has  cal- 
culated that  if  the  energy  in  the  atoms  of  the  lightest  known 
element,  hydrogen,  could  be  liberated,  one  gram  (15% 
grains)  would  suffice  to  lift  one  million  tons  to  a  height  of 
more  than  three  hundred  feet. 

We  must  observe,  however,  that  radio-active  energy  so 


106  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

far  has  been  found  associated  mainly  with  the  atoms  of  high 
atomic  weight,  as  though  in  the  evolution  or  gradual  crea- 
tion of  the  chemical  elements  Nature  had  overreached  her- 
self to  the  confines  of  stability,  even  as  in  a  lesser  way  a  child 
may  do  with  a  house  of  blocks  or  cards  or  sand.  One  story 
may  be  stable  and  stand,  but  as  the  structure  grows,  it 
becomes  more  and  more  precarious  until  finally  it  falls  apart 
into  its  constituent  units  or  groups  of  units. 

A  book  might  be  written,  as  many  books  have  been  writ- 
ten, on  the  mechanism  of  the  radium  atoms  and  the  astound- 
ing phenomena  which  attend  their  disintegration  into  con- 
stituent parts,  and  of  the  Alpha,  Beta  and  Gamma  rays 
which  are  given  off  as  the  atomic  explosions  take  place  and 
of  the  extraordinary  and  marvellous  radium  emanation  that, 
like  the  ghost  or  astral  body  of  radium  itself,  confers  for  a 
time  the  property  of  radio-activity  on  other  bodies  with 
which  it  comes  in  contact.2  Interesting  as  all  this  is,  the 
limits  of  space  prevent  following  in  detail  all  that  has  al- 
ready been  discovered.  We  have  at  least  taken  a  glimpse 
into  one  great  field  of  scientific  promise  for  the  future  of 
the  human  race. 

It  has  been  computed  that  in  an  ordinary  candle  flame 
there  must  be  at  the  very  least  some  two  hundred  thousand 
billion  molecules  at  any  given  instant,  and  that  each  one  of 
these  molecules  in  each  second  of  time  makes  at  least  four* 
teen  thousand  collisions  with  other  molecules.  It  takes 
more  imagination  than  most  of  us  possess  to  make  a  mental 
picture  of  what  is  going  on  in  a  tiny  flame  like  this,  but  we 
realize  that  the  results  of  this  molecular  activity  are  easily 
measured  in  light,  heat  and  chemical  activity.  If  we  now 

3  According  to  Professor  Tflden,  Sir  William  Crookes  possesses  a 
diamond  that  has  turned  olive  green  by  prolonged  contact  with  radium 
rays  and  is  in  itself  become  radio  active. 


Chemistry  and  the  Future  107 

transfer  our  attention  to  the  sun,  the  source  of  all  the 
energy  that  makes  life  possible,  our  minds  reel  in  attempting 
to  picture  the  atomic  and  molecular  activities  and  the  results 
which  they  produce.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  visible 
spectrum  of  sunlight  which  we  see  in  the  rainbow  and  in  a 
glass  prism.  With  the  spectroscope  we  can  analyze  the  in- 
candescent vapors  which  surround  the  numerous  suns  in  the 
firmament  and  can  see  that  they  contain  many  of  the  well 
known  terrestrial  elements  and  only  a  few  if  any  that  are 
not  now  known  on  earth.  But  at  both  the  red  and  the  violet 
end  of  the  spectrum  there  are  rays  invisible  to  our  eyes, 
which  produce  very  decided  and  wonderful  chemical  effects, 
and  it  is  reserved  for  the  chemists  and  physicists  of  the 
future  to  explore  this  wonderful  and  fascinating  field.  Al- 
ready the  ultraviolet  rays  are  being  put  in  harness  to  pro- 
duce practical  results  in  various  processes  of  industrial 
chemistry. 

While  we  are  on  the  subject  of  radiant  energy  from  the 
sun,  we  may  be  permitted,  although  it  is  not  distinctively  a 
chemical  problem,  to  touch  upon  the  latest  scientific  excite- 
ment with  respect  to  the  nature  of  light.  As  he  has  been 
so  often  asked  by  friends  to  explain  the  new  scientific  theory" 
of  light,  the  writer  is  glad  to  set  forth  his  own  understand- 
ing of  much  that  has  been  very  recently  published  on  this 
subject,  although  it  must  be  confessed  that  there  is  much 
about  this  problem  in  astronomical  physics  that  is  quite 
beyond  the  ordinarily  well  educated  person.  To  begin  with, 
we  may  find  it  helpful  to  quote  a  paragraph  from  Geoffrey 
Martin,3  written  before  Einstein's  theory  of  light  chal- 
lenged the  Newtonian  conception  of  matter.  This  author 
says  in  1911 : 

8  Triumphs  and  Wonders  of  Modern  Chemistry,  page  53. 


108  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

We  still  have  to  face  the  problem  of  the  continual  radia- 
tion of  heat  and  light  into  space.  This  has  always  seemed 
a  great  waste  to  many  scientists  who  could  not  bring  them- 
selves to  believe  that  it  was  really  lost.  This  objection  has 
been  well  voiced  by  Newton  himself.  "What,"  says  he, 
"becomes  of  the  great  flood  of  heat  and  light  which  the 
stars  radiate  into  empty  space  with  a  velocity  of  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  thousand  miles  a  second?"  Only  a  very 
small  fraction  of  this  can  be  received  by  the  planets  or  by 
other  stars,  because  these  are  mere  points  compared  with 
their  distance  from  us  and  from  each  other.*  Taking  the 
teachings  of  our  science  just  as  it  has  stood  we  should  say 
that  all  this  light  continued  to  move  on  in  straight  lines 
through  infinite  space  forever.  In  a  few  thousand  years 
it  would  reach  the  confines  of  our  great  universe.  But 
we  know  of  no  reason  why  it  should  stop  here.  During  the 
hundreds, of  millions  of  years  since  all  our  stars  began  to 
shine,  has  the  first  ray  of  light  and  heat  kept  on  through 
space  at  the  rate  of  a  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  miles 
a  second  and  will  it  continue  to  go  on  for  ages  to  come? 
If  so,  think  of  its  distance  now  and  what  its  final  goal  will 
be?  Rather  say  that  the  problem  what  becomes  of  a  ray  of 
light  is  as  yet  unsolved. 

Now  we  have  recently  learned  that  Einstein,  a  Swiss 
astronomical  physicist,  had  been  led  to  predict  that  light 
waves  or  rays  do  not  travel  in  straight  Euclidian  lines 
through  space,  but  would  be  found  to  have  mass  and  would 
therefore  be  pulled  or  deflected  by  gravity  as  they  passed 
within  the  sphere  of  influence  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  Ein- 
stein even  went  so  far  as  to  predict  the  deflection  in  seconds 
of  arc  that  the  light  rays  would  suffer  as  the  result  of  the 
pull  of  gravity.  The  recent  total  eclipse  of  the  sun  per- 
mitted accurate  observations  of  the  apparent  positions  of 
a  group  of  stars  that  could  be  photographed  during  the 

4  Italics  are  the  writer's. 


Chemistry  and  the  Future  109 

darkness  of  the  eclipse  and  compared  with  pictures  taken 
at  night  at  a  time  when  the  sun  was  not  in  a  position  to 
influence  their  rays.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  cameras 
showed  the  stars  apparently  were  not  just  where  they  should 
have  been  according  to  the  Newtonian  theory  of  the  straight 
lines  of  light.  They  did,  however,  closely  approximate  to  the 
apparent  positions  they  would  occupy  if  Einstein's  deduc- 
tions were  correct. 

Of  course,  there  are  numbers  of  scientists  who  are  kept 
busy  inventing  other  theories  and  denying  the  validity  of 
the  evidence,  just  as  numerous  others  explained  away  the 
prediction  of  the  existence  of  the  planet  Neptune  before  it 
was  ever  seen,  or  the  prediction  of  unknown  chemical  ele- 
ments by  Mendeleef  previous  to  their  actual  discovery. 

But  let  us  see  what  this  theory  of  Einstein's  really  means 
in  such  simple  language  as  we  who  are  not  astronomical 
physicists  can  understand.  At  all  events  this  is  what  the 
writer  makes  out  of  it.  In  a  purely  Euclidian  sense  we  can 
define  a  straight  line  as  the  shortest  distance  between  two 
points,  and  we  can  try  to  imagine  these  points  at  infinite 
distances  apart.  We  can  then  state  that  two  parallel  lines 
will  never  meet,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  a  mathematical 
sense  parallel  lines  always  do  meet  at  infinity.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  juggle  with  these  mathematical  expressions,  but  mani- 
festly no  one  can  either  draw  or  imagine  a  straight  line  in- 
finitely long.  In  the  Newtonian  sense,  however,  rays  of  light 
travel  in  straight  lines ;  they  are  actually  existent  things 
and  not  abstractions,  and  our  imaginations  can  accompany 
them  on  their  travels.  They  mark  or  have  marked  the  only 
straight  lines  of,  to  us,  practically  infinite  length  we  have 
known  or  can  imagine.  Now  we  are  told  that  they  are  sub- 
ject to  the  pull  of  gravity,  and  if  this  is  true,  even  to  the 

TY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
Dfc.;  r  OF  CiViL.  ENGI. 

BE-  .  CALIFORNIA 


110  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

slightest  extent,  they  can  no  more  escape  from  the  confines 
of  what  we  choose  to  call  a  material  universe  under  the 
universal  drag  of  gravity  than  can  a  stray  atom  of  hydro- 
gen afloat  in  interstellar  space  so  escape,  or  a  comet  fol- 
low its  hyperbolic  orbit  to  so-called  infinity.  With  these 
thoughts  in  our  mind,  perhaps  we  can  understand  the  scien- 
tific jargon  that  tells  us  that  in  the  Einsteinian  sense,  as 
opposed  to  the  Newtonian  or  Euclidian  sense,  there  are  no 
such  things  as  straight  lines,  which  become  merely  curves 
of  great  magnitude,  that  straight  lines  must,  like  homing 
pigeons,  come  back  some  day  to  their  beginnings,  and  that 
actually  as  well  as  philosophically  we  must  set  a  confine 
somehow  or  somewhere  to  the,  to  us,  limitless  universe. 

Now !  What,  it  may  be  remarked,  has  all  this  to  do  with 
chemistry?  In  reply  we  can  only  plead  that  we  are  now 
dealing  with  the  chemistry  of  the  future  and  chemistry 
attempts  to  study,  elucidate,  and  explain  the  nature  of 
matter.  Matter  is  ever  subject  to  the  action  of  gravity  and 
in  its  very  nature  and  essence  ever  must  be.  Remove  gravity 
in  any  universal  sense,  and,  ipso  facto,  all  material  universes 
drop  to  pieces  and  cease  to  have  being.  It  will  be  the  pro- 
vince of  chemistry  in  the  future  to  explain  matter,  and  if 
light  is  in  truth  subject  to  gravity,  it  is  a  form  or  mani- 
festation of  matter  and  falls  within  the  realm  of  the  chemist. 

One  word  in  conclusion  before  we  leave  these  astro-physi- 
cal discussions  and  return  to  those  which  are  more  of  the 
earth  earthy.  It  has  become  the  habit  of  human  speech  to 
degrade  the  word  matter.  A  materialist  has  come  to  mean 
a  small-minded  man  who  denies  the  spiritual  conceptions  of 
life  and  the  existence  of  the  God  head.  A  very  prominent 
and  growing  religious  sect  has  founded  its  church  on  the 
denial  of  matter  or  the  assertion  of  its  unworthwhileness. 
There  is  no  sensation  in  matter,  we  are  told;  in  this  mar- 


Chemistry  and  the  "Future  111 

velous  focus  of  corruscating  living  energies,  without  which 
in  very  fact  no  spiritual  perception  of  the  great  cosmic 
plan  could  have  ever  been  made  manifest.  We  sense  and  per- 
ceive matter  only  through  the  great  law  of  gravity  which 
moves  and  controls  the  stars  in  their  courses.  Indeed  gravity 
and  matter  must  be  the  very  warp  and  woof  from  the  loom 
on  which  the  Creator  weaves  the  everlasting  web  of  life  and 
love  and  destiny.5 

•Those  who  are  interested  in  these  ( speculations  and  explanations  of 
the  nature  of  matter  will  derive  instruction  and  entertainment  by  read- 
ing Fournier  d' Aloe's  popular  works  on  the  Electron  Theory  and  Two 
New  Worlds — Longman  Green  &  Co. 


CHAPTER    VI 

SOME  MODERN  ASPECTS  OF  CHEMISTRY 

WE  may  venture  to  predict  that  if  the  chemist  is  ever 
able  to  shed  any  light  on  the  real  nature  of  matter, 
he  will  approach  it  from  the  standpoint  of  the  atom  and 
the  molecule  rather  than  from  that  of  the  star  rays  and 
the  suns.  As  Sir  William  Tilden  reminds  us,  "Human  ex- 
istence hangs  between  two  great  worlds,  the  infinitely  great 
and  the  infinitely  little,  and  into  both  the  chemist  can  pene- 
trate." 

Although  the  earth  in  her  annual  orbit  sweeps  out  a  circle 
of  180  million  miles,  the  ordinary  observer,  so  vast  is  the 
stage,  sees  little  or  no  change  in  the  celestial  scenery  repre- 
sented by  the  relative  position  of  the  visible  stars.  And  at 
the  other  end  of  the  scale  it  is  calculated  with  considerable 
mathematical  precision  that  the  electrons  of  which  all  the 
atoms  of  matter  are  now  believed  to  be  constituted  have  a 
mass  of  only  about  1/1 800th  part  of  that  of  a  hydrogen 
atom.  It  is  said  that  the  absolute  mass  of  an  electron  is 
6  x  10~28  gram  and  its  radius  10~14  of  a  millimeter  which  in 
itself  is  less  than  1/16  of  an  inch.  Such  dimensions  lie  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  human  imagination,  but  they  actually 
exist,  nonetheless.  We  can,  however,  with  the  modern  ultra- 
microscope  actually  visualize  such  extremely  small  particles 
of  matter  that  they  may  be  considered  as  beginning  to  ap- 
proximate if  not  the  size  of  some  of  the  larger  molecules 

112 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  113 

themselves,  at  least  they  begin  to  partake  of  the  same  order 
of  magnitudes. 

This  introduces  to  us  the  subject  of  the  so-called  colloids 
and  dispersoids,  in  the  study  of  which  the  chemistry  of  the 
future  will  find  a  most  important  and  wonderfully  interest- 
ing field  for  research. 

Suppose  we  take  a  cubic  inch  of  stone  and  by  cross  cutting 
cleave  it  into  four  smaller  cubes  of  %  inch  face.  Now 
assume  that  we  can  repeat  this  process  more  or  less  in- 
definitely and  thus  produce  first  sixteen  cubes  of  14  inch 
dimension,  then  sixty-four  of  %  inch  and  so  on.  By  the 
time  we  have  concluded  the  seventh  operation,  our  units 
measure  1/64  inch,  about  the  size  of  grains  of  sand  on  the 
seashore,  and  there  are  some  sixteen  thousand  of  them.  They 
might  now  be  held  in  a  heaping  tablespoonful.  Now  just 
let  us  imagine  that  we  could  carry  on  this  comminution 
through  seven  more  cleavage  cycles.  We  would  then  have 
unit  cubes  of  about  1 /8000th  inch  and  some  two  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  million  of  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  by 
grinding  our  material  in  an  agate  mortar  we  can  carry  our 
fineness  of  particle  on  down  to  such  a  degree  that  if  we 
can  by  any  method  separate  one  particle  from  its  fellows  it 
will  require  the  most  powerful  microscope  to  resolve  it  so  that 
it  will  be  individually  perceptible.  Now  this  can  be  done  by 
shaking  up  a  small  weighed  quantity  of  the  powder  in  a 
liquid  to  form  a  suspension  or  emulsion  and  examining  a 
drop  of  this  under  the  microscope.  Ordinary  microscopes 
may  give  a  magnification  up  to  3000  diameters  under  the 
most  favorable  circumstances,  and  thus  render  visible  ob- 
jects which  have  a  size  of  about  one  ten-thousandth  of  a 
millimeter  across.  The  ultramicroscope,  a  very  modern  in- 
strument, will  resolve  particles  ten  times  smaller  than  this. 
Now  the  question  arises,  how  small  is  it  possible  to  grind 


Chemistry  and  Civilization 

our  powder  by  keeping  at  it  indefinitely?  That  there  is  a 
mechanical  limit  of  possibility  in  this  direction,  is  at  once 
apparent,  for  otherwise  we  should  finally  arrive  at  the  con- 
dition of  free  molecules  of  our  substance,  and,  as  molecules 
are  invisible  to  even  the  plus  ultra  of  microscopes,  we  should 
find  ourselves  rubbing  our  powder  into  invisibility,  in  very 
truth  a  "reducto  ad  absurdam."  We  can,  however,  by 
special  methods  study  fine  particles  down  to  the  limits  of 
the  resolution  of  our  ultramicroscopes,  and  an  entirely  new 
field  of  physics  and  chemistry  opens  up  before  us. 

In  1827,  Dr.  Robert  Brown,  an  English  botanist,  observed 
that  the  smallest  particles  in  suspension  in  water  that  can 
be  seen  with  an  ordinary  microscope  are  in  a  state  of  con- 
tinual movement,  apparently  buzzing  about  in  a  manner  that 
suggests  a  swarm  of  tiny  angry  insects.  This  Brownian 
movement  has  no  relation  to  the  kind  of  matter  under  ex- 
amination but  only  to  the  size  of  particle,  which  must  not 
exceed  three  one-thousandths  of  a  millimeter  (or  3  ju  as  we 
express  it)  in  diameter.  The  easiest  way  to  prepare  these 
so-called  dispersoids  for  study  is  to  dissolve  a  little  resin  in 
alcohol  and  then  pour  this  solution  into  water  in  which  the 
resin  is  insoluble,  thereby  producing  a  milky  emulsion.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  milk  is  just  such  an  emulsion  of  tiny  fat 
and  casein  globules  in  water.  Such  emulsions  pass  through 
filters  unchanged  and  can  only  be  broken  down  by  chemical 
or  better  by  electro-chemical  means,  for  it  now  appears 
that  particles  of  such  tiny  magnitude  in  liquid  suspension 
accumulate  upon  their  surfaces  like  charges  of  electricity, 
due  probably  to  the  friction  of  the  rapidly  moving  molecules 
of  the  suspending  liquid.  Now  we  all  know  that  light  bodies 
carrying  electric  charges  repel  each  other,  so  that  our  mov- 
ing particles  will  not  get  together  and  flocculate  or  coagu- 
late until  we  do  something  to  electrically  discharge  them,  a 


Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  115 

very  important  matter  in  the  clarification  and  filtration  of 
many  industrial  liquids,  as  well  as  the  modern  ore  flotation 
processes.  It  is  now  believed  by  students  of  this  fascinating 
subject  that  the  Brownian  movement  of  dispersoid  particles 
in  suspension  is  not  due  to  any  inherent  motive  power  in  the 
particles  themselves  but  that  they  are  merely  being  kicked 
about  by  the  rapidly  moving  molecules  of  the  surrounding 
liquid,  among  which  they  hang  suspended.  From  this  we 
may  infer  that  though  the  particles  themselves  consist  of 
groups  of  molecules  we  have  approached  an  order  of  mass 
magnitudes  not  far  removed  from  that  of  molecules  them- 
selves. 

So  far  we  have  been  considering  that  phase  of  so-called 
colloidal  chemistry  which  has  to  do  with  ultimately  fine 
particles.  In  1849  Thomas  Graham,  Professor  of  Chem- 
istry at  University  College,  London,  and  Master  of  the 
British  Mint,1  first  concerned  himself  with  the  diffusion  of 
dissolved  substances.  Graham  first  called  attention  to  those 
glue-like  substances  which  he  called  colloids,  which  while 
not  truly  soluble  in  water  disperse  into  it.  Soluble  crystal- 
loids like  salt  and  sugar  disappear  into  water  in  the  form 
of  free  molecules  which,  as  we  have  learned,  no  microscope 
is  powerful  enough  to  resolve,  while  colloids  disperse  as 
groups  of  molecules.  If  we  put  a  solution  containing  both 
crystalloids  and  colloids  into  a  vessel  the  bottom  of  which 
is  formed  of  a  parchment  membrane,  and  partly  immerse 
this  vessel  in  a  larger  one  containing  water,  the  crystalloid 
molecules  will  migrate  freely  through  the  pores  in  the  mem- 
brane, but  the  colloid  groups  are  too  large  and  are  stopped 
as  by  a  screen.  Chemists  call  this  method  of  separation 

1  The  author  cannot  refrain  from  inquiring  why  our  own  Directorship 
of  tKe  Mint,  with  its  large  annual  stipend,  should  nearly  always  fall 
to  a  political  henchman  of  the  President,  usually  a  man  to  whom  the 
mysteries  of  chemistry  and  metallurgy  are  as  Choctaw  and  Sanscrit. 


11,6  Chemistry  and  Civilisation 

dialysis,  but  it  is  interesting  to  us  all  because  this  one  fact 
of  nature  makes  organic  cell  growth  possible.  If  in  our 
membraned  dialyzer  we  place  a  solution  of  sugar  and  im- 
merse this  in  water,  the  water  molecules  can  pass  through 
but  the  sugar  cannot.  The  consequence  is  that  owing  to 
the  laws  of  diffusion  and  surface  tension,  a  pressure  is  set 
up.  The  water  molecules  diffuse  through  the  membrane, 
acting  as  though  they  were  attempting  to  bring  the  sugar 
solution  to  a  condition  of  infinite  dilution.  This  diffusion 
pressure  is  known  as  osmosis.  Osmotic  pressures  rise  to  very 
great  magnitudes  indeed  and  are  only  limited  by  the  strength 
of  the  semi-permeable  membranes  which  support  them.2  It 
is  this  phenomenon  which  explains  the  rise  of  sap  in  the 
tallest  trees,  operating  against  gravity.  It  also  explains 
the  swelling  and  growth  of  organic  cells,  all  of  which  are 
surrounded  with  membranes  of  a  more  or  less  permeable 
nature.3  A  hen's  egg  which  is  only  a  very  large  cell  has 
such  a  membrane  just  underneath  its  calcareous  shell.  By 
blowing  out  the  contents  of  an  egg  through  a  hole  bored  in 
one  end  and  substituting  a  sugar  solution  in  its  place,  a 
very  good  illustration  of  osmotic  pressure  can  be  made.  It 
is  necessary  first  to  carefully  cement  a  glass  tube  over  the 
hole  bored  in  the  shell  and  then  dissolve  off  a  bit  of  the  cal- 
careous shell  at  the  opposite  end  with  dilute  acid.  If  we 
immerse  this  manufactured  osmotic  cell  in  colored  water, 
we  will  soon  see  a  column  of  liquid  rising  against  gravity 
in  the  tube  just  as  sap  rises  in  the  tubulars  of  a  growing 
plant.  It  was  Pfeffer,  a  professor  of  botany  at  Bale,  who 

2  Recently,  with  improved  apparatus,  osmotic  pressures  have  been 
recorded  as  high  as  100  atmospheres  or  1^500  Ibs.  to  the  square  inch. 

*  Professor  Adrian  Brown  has  recently  shown  that  the  barley  grain  is 
covered  with  a  membrane  which  is  active  even  after  it  has  been  boiled, 
thus  proving  that  the  selective  action  is  physical  and  is  not  a  physio- 
logical action  of  living  matter. 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  117 

first  observed  and  began  to  measure  osmotic  pressures  about 
forty  years  ago,  but  it  remained  for  Van't  HofF,  the  famous 
Dutch  scientist,  in  1887,  to  interpret  Pfeffer's  results  and 
link  them  up  to  one  of  the  greatest  scientific  generalizations 
of  all  times.  Van't  Hoff  first  called  attention  to  a  com- 
plete parallelism  between  osmotic  pressures  and  the  laws 
which  govern  gas  pressures.  In  other  words,  the  sugar 
molecules  in  solution  exert  pressure  similar  and  equal  to 
the  pressure  of  gas  in  an  enclosed  vessel,  and  tend  to  obey 
Boyle's,  Gay-Lussac's,  and  Avogadro's  laws  of  gas  pres- 
sures and  volumes.  The  boundary  of  a  liquid  is  governed  by 
what  is  known  as  surface  tension  which  makes  small  quanti- 
ties of  detached  liquids  behave  as  though  they  were  enclosed 
in  an  elastic  skin  which  tends  to  compress  it  within  the 
smallest  possible  space.  .As  liquids  are  incompressible  in 
all  directions,  they  thus,  when  in  detached  masses,  always 
appear  as  spheroid  drops.  Within  this  bounding  surface 
tension  the  sugar  and  water  exert  osmotic  pressure. 

But  now  Van't  HofF  discovered  an  entirely  new  and  mar- 
velous principle  in  chemistry.  It  was  already  known  that 
solutions  of  sugar  and  similar  water  soluble  organic  sub- 
stances do  not  conduct  electricity,  while  common  salt  and 
other  soluble  inorganic  salts,  acids  and  alkalies  are  gener- 
ally good  conductors,  but  there  was  no  explanation  of  this 
fact.  It  was  now  found  that  while  sugar  and  other  organic 
molecules  obeyed  the  parallelism  with  the  gas  law  of  Avo- 
gadro  4  that  equal  molecular  weights  dissolved  in  equal  vol- 
umes of  the  same  solvent  exert  the  same  osmotic  pressure, 
inorganic  substances  exert  in  all  cases  pressures  much  higher 
than  this,  and  in  many  cases  of  dilute  solution  just  twice  as 

4  Avogadro's  law  is  that  equal  volumes  of  all  gases  at  the  same 
temperature  and  pressure  contain  the  same  number  of  molecules  and 
exert  the  same  pressure,  cf.  Chapter  I,  p.  24. 


118  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

high  as  the  theory  calls  for.  Here  was  a  fact  that  required 
an  explanation,  and  the  explanation  was  forthcoming  in 
Van't  HofPs  Theory  of  Solutions.  This  theory  which  al- 
though it  has  been  much  controverted  has  stood  the  test  of 
time  and  experiment,  recites:  that  all  conductors  of  elec- 
tricity in  solution  are  more  or  less  dissociated,  depending  on 
the  dilution,  into  ions  which  are  simply  the  atoms  or  groups 
of  atoms  carrying  equal  and  opposite  charges  of  electricity. 
If  we  dissolve  a  molecular  weight,  measured  in  grams  (a 
gram  molecule),  of  sugar  in  a  given  quantity  of  water  we 
get  a  normal  osmotic  pressure.  If  we  dissolve  a  gram-mole- 
cule of  salt  in  the  same  quantity  of  water,  we  get  an  osmotic 
pressure  due  to  the  summation  of  the  chlorine  and  sodium 
ions,  or  twice  as  much  as  an  undissociated  molecule  would 
give.  We  now  write  these  dissociations  as  shown  in  the 
following  reactions  : 

+         — 

NA€L    "^T.  NA  -f  CL 


It  is  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  the  intricacies  of  the 
theory  of  solutions,  but  it  suffices  to  say  that  applied  to 
chemistry  as  a  whole  this  theory  not  only  explains  how  elec- 
tric currents  are  conducted  through  some  solutions  and  not 
through  others,  but  it  has  also  enabled  us  to  understand 
many  of  the  mysteries  of  chemistry,  which  were  theretofore 
inexplicable.  In  the  hands  of  the  chemist  of  the  future,  it 
will  undoubtedly  lead  to  much  interesting  new  knowledge. 

In  treating  the  subject  of  the  outlook  for  chemistry  in 
the  future,  we  have  so  far  been  dealing  mainly  with  the 
aspects  of  pure  science.  We  must  now  turn  our  attention 
to  some  of  the  more  practical  chemical  problems  of  the 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  119 

future.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  waste  products  of 
the  great  coal  tar  industry  are  now  conserved  and  turned 
into  useful  substances  in  the  by-product  coke  oven.  Almost 
every  industry  has  its  by-products,  many  of  which  are  still 
thrown  away  as  useless,  to  pollute  our  streams  and  rivers. 
This  must  eventually  be  changed,  and  there  is  a  great  field 
open  for  the  chemists  of  the  future.  As  it  is,  however,  the 
chemists  as  usual  are  far  in  advance  of  capital,  for  it  is 
easier  to  work  out  a  process  than  it  is  to  get  hard  headed 
practical  business  men  to  give  it  a  trial.  In  the  manufacture 
of  newsprint  paper  alone  there  is  a  tremendous  drain  upon 
our  forest  resources.  A  single  Sunday  edition  of  one  metro- 
politan newspaper  with  its  ridiculous  colored  supplements 
will  use  up  in  one  day  the  equivalent  of  many  acres  of 
spruce  and  poplar  that  took  years  in  the  growing  and  which, 
unless  we  change  our  wasteful  deforestation  will  never  grow 
again.  The  waste  sulfite  liquors  from  the  paper  pulp  mills 
are  an  invitation  to  the  chemist,  and  already  several  useful 
products  can  be  made  from  them,  including  denatured  alco- 
hol. Again  by  cooking  sawdust,  the  by-product  of  the  lum- 
ber industry,  with  dilute  sulfuric  acid,  neutralizing  the  acid 
with  alkali  and  fermenting  the  pulp,  ethyl  alcohol  is  made, 
quite  good  enough  to  drink  if  drinking  alcohol  had  not  be- 
come taboo,  but  in  any  case  it  can  be  denatured  and  used 
in  the  arts  and  industries  and  eventually  perhaps  save  grain 
and  sugar  for  other  uses. 

And,  what,  we  may  well  inquire,  is  to  be  the  future  of 
alcohol  when  the  whole  world  goes  dry  as  it  bids  fair  to  do, 
at  least  as  far  as  the  barter  and  sale  of  alcohol  as  a  beverage 
is  concerned?  That  a  considerable  body  of  mankind  will 
ever  stop  using  alcohol  as  a  stimulant  seems  very  doubtful. 
The  simple  fact  that  the  juices  of  all  the  fruits  of  the  earth 


120  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

change  their  starch  and  sugar  into  alcohol  up  to  a  content 
of  from  15  to  17  per  cent  by  volume  by  the  action  of  their 
own  natural  ferments  and  enzymes,  seems  to  place  the  final 
decision  in  the  hands  of  a  higher  tribunal  than  any  man- 
made  legislature.  Men  can  govern  what  they  barter  and 
exchange,  but  they  can  no  more  order  a  yeast  cell  or  an 
enzyme  to  cease  its  action  than  King  Canute  could  com- 
mand the  advancing  tide.  Curiously  enough,  Christians  be- 
lieve, or  to  be  consistent  should  believe,  that  the  great  Ex- 
emplar himself  changed  water  or  at  least  a  watery  solution 
into  wine  that  the  wedding  feast  should  lack  nothing  that 
was  customary  to  the  occasion,  an  act  that  requires  only  a 
deeper  insight  into  the  life  processes  than  the  ordinary  man 
possesses  to  accomplish. 

But  it  is  not  after  all  as  a  stimulant  that  alcohol  will 
play  its  great  role  in  the  future  history  of  mankind.  Civili- 
zation needs  power.  The  nineteenth  century  worked  out 
its  destiny  with  coal,  the  twentieth  is  working  toward  gaso- 
line and  oil.  The  steam  engine  started  as  a  coal  burner,  the 
internal  combustion  engine  as  an  oil  burner,  but  what  is  to 
come  when  the  coal  mines  and  the  oil  wells  have  been  gutted? 
Coal  and  oil,  though  abundant,  are  not  inexhaustible,  but 
alcohol  can  be  made  while  we  sleep  by  the  tireless  energy  of 
countless  billions  of  microorganisms.  Wherever  starch  and 
sugar  in  any  form  can  be  made  to  grow,  alcohol  can  be 
harvested  to  feed  the  engines  of  the  future,  as  hay  and  oats 
were  grown  to  feed  the  horses  of  the  past.  Herein,  we  may 
with  some  degree  of  confidence  predict,  lies  the  future  of 
alcohol  in  the  service  of  man. 

In  previous  pages  we  have  had  occasion  to  talk  much  of 
the  liquid  hydrocarbon  benzene  which  can  itself  be  used  as 
a  motor  fuel  as  a  substitute  for  gasoline,  and  which  is  the 
source  of  many  useful  dyes  and  explosives.  If  we  took  a 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry 

quantity  of  it  to  the  arctic  regions  and  presented  it  to  the 
Esquimaux,  they  would  know  it  only  as  a  solid  unless  they 
warmed  it  by  a  fire.  For  this  lambent,  very  liquid  liquid  as 
we  know  it,  turns  to  ice  at  ten  degrees  above  the  freezing1 
point  of  water.  This  is  true  of  many  other  common  sub- 
stances that  we  are  accustomed  to  see  and  handle  only  in 
the  liquid  phase,  and  would  find  ourselves  quite  unfamiliar 
with  in  colder  ranges  of  temperatures.  Elastic  India  rub- 
ber is  as  brittle  as  glass  at  the  temperature  of  liquid  air. 

Man  can  tolerate  for  a  limited  period,  if  he  is  accustomed 
to  it  and  takes  precautions,  a  range  on  the  Fahrenheit  scale 
of  between  60°  and  70°  below  zero  to  some  130°  to  140° 
above.  In  other  words,  he  enjoys,  if  that  term  can  be  prop- 
erly so  employed,  an  outside  range  of  about  200°  F.  Let 
us  shift,  however,  from  the  silly  Fahrenheit  scale  by  which 
we  determine  whether  we  are  comfortable  or  not,  to  the  more 
rational  and  scientific  centigrade  scale.5  The  absolute  zero 
of  temperature  below  which  molecular  motion  and  all  phe- 
nomenal activity  ceases  has  been  fixed  at  273°  below  the 
centigrade  zero.  Science  has  explored  the  region  down  to 
as  low  as  only  8.5°  C.  above  the  absolute  zero.  This  extraor- 
dinary temperature  was  reached  by  boiling  liquified  helium 
under  reduced  pressure.  Liquid  hydrogen  boils  at  253° 
below  zero,  while  liquid  air  boils  at — 181°  C.  All  of  the  so- 
called  permanent  gases  have  now  been  liquified  and  solidified 
by  intense  cold.  Only  helium  has  so  far  resisted  solidifica- 
tion. Many  people  do  not  understand  that  before  gases  can 
be  liquified  they  must  also  be  under  a  critical  pressure  which 
differs  for  each  particular  gas.  There  is  also  a  critical  tem- 
perature for  each  gas,  above  which  no  possible  pressure  will 

5  The  Fahrenheit  thermometer  places  the  freezing  point  of  water 
at  32°  above  zero  and  the  boiling  point  at  212°.  The  centigrade  gradu- 
ates these  points  on  the  metric  system  between  zero  and  100°. 


Chemistry  and  Civilization 

cause  it  to  liquify.  When  these  critical  constants  are  known 
and  the  costly  apparatus  is  available,  a  new  world  of  chem- 
istry and  physics  is  opened  up  for  research. 

Many  who  have  given  little  attention  to  these  modern 
developments  of  science  may  observe  that  while  this  may 
all  be  very  interesting  to  specialists,  phenomena  that  occur 
at  temperatures  far  below  any  that  man  can  experience  can 
have  no  possible  practical  bearing  or  value.  In  order  to 
see  if  this  is  true  or  not,  let  us  briefly  review  the  interesting 
story  of  helium. 

When  it  was  learned,  soon  after  its  discovery,  that  the 
spectroscope  could  be  used  to  analyze  and  recognize  the 
composition  of  incandescent  gases,  it  was  at  once  used  to 
explore  the  incandescent  chromosphere  of  the  sun.  The 
presence  of  many  of  our  well  known  terrestrial  elements 
was  at  once  recognized.  There  was,  however,  a  brilliant 
yellow  line  very  close  to  the  two  sodium  lines  in  the  sun's 
spectrum,  which  did  not  correspond  with  any  known  ele- 
ment on  earth.  This  line  had  been  mapped  by  Jansen  and 
Lockyer  in  1865  and  attributed  to  a  solar  element  which 
they  named  helium.  It  will  be  remembered  that  in  an  ear- 
lier chapter  it  was  told  how  Raleigh  and  Ramsay  discovered 
argon  in  our  atmosphere  in  1895  by  repeating  with  modern 
apparatus  Cavendish's  classic  experiment  of  sparking  air 
and  oxygen  in  an  inverted  tube  over  an  alkaline  liquid,  thus 
causing  all  of  the  nitrogen  and  oxygen  to  unite  as  nitric 
acid  and  be  absorbed  by  the  alkali.  Following  this  wonder- 
ful discovery  of  argon  as  a  new  constituent  in  ordinary 
atmosphere,  the  next  thing  was  to  endeavor  to  deter- 
mine whether  or  not  this  element  could  be  found  combined  in 
any  of  the  earthy  minerals.  Since  argon  has  a  well  defined 
spectrum,  Professor  Ramsay  and  a  number  of  other  scien- 
tists proceeded  to  searchingly  re-examine  the  spectra  of  a 


Some  Modem  Aspects  of  Chemistry 

number  of  minerals  and  earthy  substances,  but  without 
avail,  for  argon  refused  to  reveal  its  presence.  About  this 
time  our  own  Dr.  Hillebrand,  then  chief  analytical  chemist 
with  the  U.  S.  Geological  Survey,  had  had  turned  over  to 
him  for  analysis  in  the  course  of  his  routine  work,  a  sample 
of  the  rather  rare  uranium  bearing  mineral  known  as  clevite. 
Dr.  Hillebrand  noticed  that  when  he  boiled  this  mineral 
in  dilute  sulfuric  acid,  an  inert  gas  was  given  off,  which  not 
having  the  research  equipment  at  hand  to  examine  the  spec- 
trum of,  he  very  naturally  presumed  was  nitrogen.  How- 
ever, although  it  was  a  hitherto  unknown  phenomenon  for  a 
mineral  to  give  off  an  inert,  difficultly  recognizable  gas  when 
heated  in  a  dilute  acid,  a  less  expert  and  conscientious  chem- 
ist might  easily  have  passed  it  by  and  assumed  that  the  gas 
was  merely  nitrogen  left  over  from  air  that  was  occluded 
or  imprisoned  in  the  pores  of  the  mineral.  Dr.  Hillebrand 
did  not,  however,  ignore  his  observation  but  published  a 
short  note  in  a  chemical  journal,  describing  it  but  drawing 
no  definite  conclusions.  Hillebrand's  note  fell  under  the  eye 
of  Ramsay  who  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  the  unusual 
gas  was  very  possibly  argon.  The  mineralogical  museums  of 
London  were  immediately  ransacked  for  specimens  of  clevite, 
Hillebrand's  operation  repeated,  and  the  gas  purified  and 
examined  with  the  spectroscope.  To  the  astonishment  of 
the  scientific  world,  the  yellow  line  of  the  solar  element 
helium  flashed  out  its  wireless  message,  "I  am  here." 

American  science  has  not  made  many  contributions  to  the 
new  chemistry  of  the  past  quarter  century,  but  it  has  always 
seemed  to  the  author  that  Dr.  Hillebrand's  announcement 
was  the  immediate  cause  of  a  long  series  of  very  remarkable 
discoveries.  After  the  isolation  and  purification  of  helium, 
the  next  thing  was  to  determine  its  atomic  weight  which 
was  found  to  be  4,  so  that  next  to  hydrogen  (1)  it  is  the 


124  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

lightest  of  all  the  gases.  While  engaged  in  the  study  of 
helium,  Ramsay  discovered  associated  with  it  two  other  un- 
known inert  gases  both  of  which  found  a  vacant  place  wait- 
for  them,  as  had  helium  itself,  in  Mendeleeff's  periodic  ar- 
rangement of  the  elements.  These  two  gases,  neon  (the 
stranger) — atomic  weight  20 — and  krypton  (hidden) — 
atomic  weight  83 — arrange  themselves  on  either  side  of  the 
equally  inert  gas  argon.  For  both  argon  and  helium  im- 
portant practical  uses  have  been  found,  and  it  is  probable 
that  the  chemistry  of  the  future  will  also  find  something 
useful  for  neon  and  krypton  to  do. 

We  have  already  previously  learned  how  the  Crookes 
tubes  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  Roentgen  rays  and  these 
in  turn  to  Becquerel's  discoveries  and  these  to  the  isolation 
by  Madame  Curie  of  radium  and  the  other  radioactive  ele- 
ments, actinium  and  polonium.  We  shall  now  learn  how 
helium  linked  up  to  these  discoveries.  The  three  elements  in 
Mjendeleeff's  classification  which  have  the  highest  atomic 
weights  are  radium  (224),  thorium  (232),  and  uranium 
(239).  It  is  now  known  that  all  these  heavy  atoms  are 
undergoing  a  gradual  disintegration  and  that  helium  is  one 
of  their  decomposition  products.  It  is  possible,  if  not  prob- 
able, that  in  the  evolution  of  the  elements  Nature  attempted 
even  heavier  atoms  than  uranium  but  that  these,  owing  to 
their  inherent  instability,  have  broken  down  and  that  neon 
and  krypton  were  among  their  products  of  disintegration. 
The  theory  has  been  considered  that  radium  is  born  of 
the  falling  down  of  the  heavier  uranium  and  thorium  atoms, 
and  that  radium  in  turn,  as  it  throws  off  helium  atoms,  gives 
birth  to  niton,  the  radium  emanation  which  is  radium  (226) 
minus  helium  (4)  or  niton)  (222).  Those  who  wish  to  know 
more  of  the  recent  work  of  chemistry  which  bears  upon  the 
genesis  of  the  elements  in  the  light  of  radio-chemistry,  will 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  125 

have  no  difficulty  in  finding  a  rich  bibliography  of  the  sub- 
ject both  popular  and  scientific.  There  is  always  a  tempta- 
tion to  linger  in  this  fairyland  of  science,  but  we  must  get 
on  to  the  more  practical  chemical  problems  of  the  future. 

We  all  remember  the  part  that  the  dirigible  balloon  play- 
ed in  the  war,  and  that  recently  an  English  dirigible  has 
crossed  and  re-crossed  the  Atlantic.  It  would  seem  that  it 
is  now  only  a  question  of  time  before  transatlantic  aerial 
passenger  and  mail  transportation  will  be  regularly  carried 
on,  provided  that  the  menace  due  to  the  extreme  inflamma- 
bility and  the  explosiveness  of  the  accidental  admixture  of 
hydrogen  gas  with  air  can  be  overcome.  The  answer  seems 
to  be  helium  which  is  not  only  uninflammable  in  itself  but 
when  mixed  with  hydrogen  in  sufficient  quantity  makes  a 
perfectly  safe,  extremely  buoyant  gas  for  balloons.  During 
the  war  somebody  discovered  that  some  of  our  natural  gas 
from  the  southwestern  oil  and  gas  fields  contained  notable 
quantities  of  helium,  probably  derived  from  the  decomposi- 
tion of  radium  contained  in  subterranean  rocks.  Since 
helium  is  the  last  gas  to  resist  liquification,  we  have  only 
to  liquify  all  the  other  constituents  of  these  natural  gases 
in  order  to  produce  pure  helium.  Several  processes  for  the 
commercial  liquification  of  air  have  already  been  adapted 
for  this  purpose,  so  the  future  exploitation  of  helium  is 
only  a  question  of  demand  and  cost  of  production. 

We  have  been  dealing  with  operations  which  take  place, 
like  the  liquification  of  the  permanent  gases,  at  hundreds 
of  degrees  below  zero.  We  will  now  turn  our  attention  to 
the  other  end  of  the  thermal  scale,  where  men  have  been 
conducting  and  will  continue  to  conduct  chemical  reactions 
at  the  temperature  of  the  electric  arc,  thousands  of  degrees 
above  zero.  While  heating  a  mixture  of  lime  and  cokedust 


Chemistry  and  Civilization 

in  an  electric  furnace,  a  number  of  years  ago,  presumably 
with  the  object  of  reducing  the  lime  to  its  metallic  base  cal- 
cium, the  experimenter  found  on  cooling  the  furnace  that  it 
contained  only  a  dull  gray,  limy  looking  mass.  This  was 
considered  worthless  and  was  thrown  out.  It  had  been  rain- 
ing, and  some  of  the  furnace  product  landed  in  a  pool  or 
puddle  of  water.  To  the  astonishment  of  the  investigator, 
contact  between  this  material  and  water  produced  a  peculiar 
smelling  inflammable  organic  gas.  This  was  acetylene  gas1 
(C2H2),  and  its  accidental  discovery  ultimately  established 
two  great  industries,  first  in  the  manufacture  of  calcium 
carbide  for  the  production  of  acetylene  and  finally  as  a 
step  ,in  the  fixation  of  air  nitrogen  through  calcium  cyana- 
mid.  By  heating  coke  dust  and  silica  or  fine  sand  together 
with  a  pinch  of  salt  in  the  electric  furnace,  carborundum 
is  made,  a  wonderful  artificial  abrasive  which  has  also  de- 
veloped into  a  great  industry.  By  heating  iron  ore,  coke 
and  silicon  to  the  temperature  of  the  electric  arc,  we  get 
ferro-silicon.  The  uses  that  the  metallurgists  and  electri- 
cal engineers  have  put  this  material  to  is  another  fairy  tale 
of  science.  By  adding  a  proper  proportion  of  ferro-silicon 
to  a  molten  heat  of  open  hearth  steel,  high  silicon  steel 
alloys  are  produced  which  the  designer  of  electrical  ma- 
chinery has  found  a  most  important  use  for.  All  electric 
motors  and  transformers  which  supply  the  powers  for  the 
manifold  uses  of  modern  civilization  are  merely  variations 
on  Faraday's  old  principle  of  winding  coils  of  insulated 
copper  wire  around  magnetic  cores  or  pole  pieces.  The 
efficiency  of  such  apparatus  depends  largely  on  the  so-called 
magnetic  flux  set  up  in  the  metallic  cores.  There  are  cer- 
tain eddy  currents  or  what  is  termed  hysteresis  set  up,  which 
counteract  the  desired  electro-magnetic  impulses  generated 
in  the  machine.  By  building  the  cores  on  armatures  of  in- 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry  187 

sulated  layers  or  laminae  of  high,  silicon  or  "electric  steel" 
these  effects  have  been  almost  entirely  overcome. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  benefits  of  a  discovery 
like  this  accrue  only  to  the  manufacturer  of  electrical  ma- 
chinery. On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  public  and  humanity 
generally  that  reaps  the  benefit.  The  weight  and  hence  the 
cost  of  machinery  per  horsepower  of  energy  has  been  so  re- 
duced by  this  one  discovery  alone  that  even  the  housewife 
can  now  afford  to  carry  on  by  electricity  what  were  once 
called  menial  tasks.  The  saving  to  the  world  as  a  whole  by 
the  discovery  of  high  silicon  electric  steel  would  aggregate 
many  millions  of  dollars. 

We  have  been  discussing  some  of  the  many  accomplish- 
ments of  chemistry  at  very  high  temperatures,  and  doubtless 
this  is  a  fertile  field  for  the  chemists  of  the  future  to  work 
in.  At  a  lower  range  of  temperatures  much  interesting  work 
is  going  on  in  which  the  public  is  or  should  be  interested. 
Most  of  the  wheels  that  turn  to  do  the  world's  work  today 
are  propelled  by  petroleum  or  some  of  its  products.  Of  these 
probably  the  most  important  are  the  lighter  distillation 
fractions  or  distillates  which  we  in  America  class  under  the 
unlovely  name  of  gasoline  and  which  in  Europe  are  better 
named  "petrol."  Some  of  the  crude  oils  which  gush  or  are 
pumped  from  driven  wells  contain  these  light  boiling  frac- 
tions, but  the  oil  from  many  of  the  larger  and  more  im- 
portant fields  such  as  the  Mexican  contain  little  or  none. 
This  fact  has  been  a  matter  of  interest  and  study  to  many 
chemists  who  have  successfully  attempted  to  do  what  Nature 
in  many  cases  failed  to  do,  viz. :  provide  the  light  volatile 
products  needed  for  use  in  automotive  machinery.  By  dis- 
tilling or  heating  in  a  controlled  manner  heavy  crude  oils, 
the  large  molecules  are  "cracked"  into  smaller  and  more 
active  ones,  and  thus  gasoline  is  derived  from  petroleums 


128  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

which  before  the  science  of  chemistry  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  them  were  barren  of  motor  fuel.  But  even  with  this, 
the  growing  use  of  the  internal  combustion  engine  on  land 
and  sea  will  make  a  very  special  demand  on  the  chemists 
of  the  future.  The  author  here  ventures  to  predict  that 
the  great  achievements  and  excitements  that  have  filled  the 
book  of  chemical  accomplishment  during  the  past  half  cen- 
tury will  be  as  nothing  compared  with  the  triumphs  and 
marvels  which  are  yet  to  come. 

We  have  now  fulfilled  the  task  undertaken  when  these 
chapters  were  begun.  At  best  it  has  been  possible  to  bring 
out  only  the  high  lights  of  the  general  picture,  and  much 
is  still  left  indistinct  in  the  shadows.  Those  who  have  fol- 
lowed the  story  must  have  been  impressed  with  the  great 
contributions  that  have  been  made  to  chemistry  by  English 
scientists.  From  Boyle  and  Cavendish  to  Faraday  and 
finally  to  Perkin,  Dewar  and  Tilden  who  are  still  living,  the 
record  is  a  succession  of  brilliant  accomplishment.  It  will 
also  be  noted  with  pride  by  all  our  countrymen  that  by  far 
the  greater  part  of  these  triumphs  originated  in  and 
through  the  Institution  founded  in  London  by  the  American 
Benjamin  Thompson,  soi  disant  Count  Rumford.  What 
more  fitting  then  that  we  should  conclude  with  words  spoken 
in  the  lecture  room  of  that  Institution  by  one  who  though 
not  a  chemist  is  a  master  of  modern  thought  and  expres- 
sion. H.  G.  Wells,  in  a  discourse  on  The  Discovery  of  the 
Future,  delivered  on  January  24,  1902,  gives  utterance 
to  thoughts  which  exactly  mirror  forth  those  of  the  present 
author  but  which  he  could  not  have  expressed  with  such 
eloquence. 

"Our  lives  and  powers  are  limited,  our  scope  in  space  and 
time  is  limited,  and  it  is  not  unreasonable  that  for  funda- 
mental beliefs  we  must  go  outside  the  sphere  of  reason  and 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry 

set  our  feet  upon  faith.  Implicit  in  all  such  speculations 
as  this,  is  a  very  definite  and  quite  arbitrary  belief,  and  that 
belief  is  that  neither  humanity  nor  in  truth  any  individual 
human  being  is  living  its  life  in  vain.  And  it  is  entirely  by  an 
act  of  faith  that  we  must  rule  out  of  our  forecasts  certain 
possibilities,  certain  things  that  one  may  consider  improbable 
and  against  the  chances,  but  that  no  one  upon  scientific 
grounds  can  call  impossible.  One  must  admit  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  show  why  certain  things  should  not  utterly 
destroy  and  end  the  entire  human  race  and  story,  why  night 
should  not  presently  come  down  and  make  all  our  dreams 
and  efforts  vain.  It  is  conceivable,  for  example,  that  some 
great  unexpected  mass  of  matter  should  presently  rush  upon 
us  out  of  space,  whirl  sun  and  planets  aside  like  dead  leaves 
before  the  breeze,  and  collide  with  and  utterly  destroy  every 
spark  of  life  upon  this  earth.  So  far  as  positive  human 
knowledge  goes,  this  is  a  conceivably  possible  thing.  There 
is  nothing  in  science  to  show  why  such  a  thing  should  not  be. 
It  is  conceivable,  too,  that  some  pestilence  may  presently 
appear,  some  new  disease,  that  will  destroy,  not  10  or  15  or 
SO  per  cent  of  the  earth's  inhabitants  as  pestilences  have 
done  in  the  past,  but  100  per  cent,  and  so  end  our  race.  No 
one,  speaking  from  scientific  grounds  alone,  can  say,  "That 
cannot  be."  And  no  one  can  dispute  that  some  great  disease 
of  the  atmosphere,  some  trailing  cometary  poison,  some  great 
emanation  of  vapor  from  the  interior  of  the  earth,  such  as 
Mr.  Shiel  has  made  a  brilliant  use  of  in  his  "Purple  Cloud," 
is  consistent  with  every  demonstrated  fact  in  the  world. 
There  may  arise  new  animals  to  prey  upon  us  by  land  and 
sea,  and  there  may  come  some  drug  or  a  wrecking  madness 
into  the  minds  of  men.  And  finally,  there  is  the  reasonable 
certainty  that  this  sun  of  ours  must  some  day  radiate  itself 
toward  extinction ;  that,  at  least,  must  happen ;  it  will  grow 
cooler  and  cooler,  and  its  planets  will  rotate  ever  more 
sluggishly  until  some  day  this  earth  of  ours,  tideless  and  slow 
moving,  will  be  dead  and  frozen,  and  all  that  has  lived  upon 
it  will  be  frozen  out  and  done  with.  There  surely  man  must 
end.  That  of  all  such  nightmares  is  the  most  insistently  con- 
vincing. 


130  Chemistry  and  Civilization 

And  yet  one  doesn't  believe  it. 

At  least  I  do  not.  And  I  do  not  believe  in  these  things  be- 
cause I  have  come  to  believe  in  certain  other  things — in  the 
coherency  and  purpose  in  the  world  and  in  the  greatness  of 
human  destiny.  Worlds  may  freeze  and  suns  may.  perish, 
but  there  stirs  something  within  us  now  that  can  never  die 
again. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me  when  I  speak  of  the  greatness 
of  human  destiny. 

If  I  may  speak  quite  openly  to  you,  I  will  confess  that, 
considered  as  a  final  product,  I  do  not  think  very  much  of 
myself  or  (saving  your  presence)  my  fellow-creatures.  I  do 
not  think  I  could  possibly  join  in  the  worship  of  humanity 
with  any  gravity  or  sincerity.  Think  of  it.  Think  of  the 
positive  facts.  There  are  surely  moods  for  all  of  us  when 
one  can  feel  Swift's  amazement  that  such  a  being  should  deal 
in  pride.  There  are  moods  when  one  can  join  in  the  laughter 
of  Democritus;  and  they  would  come  oftener  were  not  the 
spectacle  of  human  littleness  so  abundantly  shot  with  pain. 
But  it  is  not  only  with  pain  that  the  world  is  shot — it  is 
shot  with  promise.  Small  as  our  vanity  and  carnality  makes 
us,  there  has  been  a  day  of  still  smaller  things.  It  is  the  long 
ascent  of  the  past  that  gives  the  lie  to  our  despair.  We 
know  now  that  all  the  blood  and  passion  of  our  life  was 
represented  in  the  carboniferous  time  by  something — some- 
thing, perhaps,  cold-blooded  and  with  a  clammy  skin,  that 
lurked  between  air  and  water,  and  fled  before  the  giant 
amphibia  of  those  days. 

For  all  the  folly,  blindness,  and  pain  of  our  lives,  we  have 
come  some  way  from  that.  And  the  distance  we  have 
traveled  gives  us  some  earnest  of  the  way  we  have  yet  to  go. 

Why  should  things  cease  at  man?  Why  should  not  this 
rising  curve  rise  yet  more  steeply  and  swiftly?  There  are 
many  things  to  suggest  that  we  are  now  in  a  phase  of  rapid 
and  unprecedented  development.  The  conditions  under 
which  men  live  are  changing  with  an  ever-increasing  rapidity, 
and,  so  far  as  our  knowledge  goes,  no  sort  of  creatures  have 
ever  lived  under  changing  conditions  without  undergoing  the 
profoundest  changes  themselves.  In  the  past  century  there 


Some  Modern  Aspects  of  Chemistry 

was  more  change  in  the  conditions  of  human  life  than  there 
had  been  in  the  previous  thousand  years.  A  hundred  years 
ago  inventors  and  investigators  were  rare  scattered  men,  and 
now  invention  and  inquiry  is  the  wrork  of  an  organized  army. 
This  century  will  see  changes  that  will  dwarf  those  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  as  those  of  the  nineteenth  dwarf  those  of 
the  eighteenth.  One  can  see  no  sign  anywhere  that  this  rush 
of  change  will  be  over  presently,  that  the  positivist  dream  of 
a  social  reconstruction  and  of  a  new  static  culture  phase 
will  ever  be  realized.  Human  society  never  has  been  quite 
static,  and  it  will  presently  cease  to  attempt  to  be  static. 
Everything  seems  pointing  to  the  belief  that  we  are  entering 
upon  a  progress  that  will  go  on,  with  an  ever  widening  and 
ever  more  confident  stride,  forever.  The  reorganization  of 
society  that  is  going  on  now  beneath  the  traditional  ap- 
pearance of  things  is  a  kinetic  reorganization.  We  are 
getting  into  marching  order.  We  have  struck  our  camp 
forever  and  we  are  out  upon  the  roads. 

We  are  in  the  beginning  of  the  greatest  change  that  hu- 
manity has  ever  undergone.  There  is  no  shock,  no  epoch- 
making  incident — but  then  there  is  no  shock  at  a  cloudy  day- 
break. At  no  point  can  we  say,  Here  it  commences,  now; 
last  minute  was  night  and  this  is  morning.  But  insensibly 
we  are  in  the  day.  If  we  care  to  look,  we  can  foresee  grow- 
ing knowledge,  growing  order,  and  presently  a  deliberate  im- 
provement of  the  blood  and  character  of  the  race.  And  what 
we  can  see  and  imagine  gives  us  a  measure  and  gives  us  faith 
for  what  surpasses  the  imagination. 

It  is  possible  to  believe  that  all  the  past  is  but  the  be- 
ginning of  a  beginning,  and  that  all  that  is  and  has  been  is 
but  the  twilight  of  the  dawn.  It  is  possible  to  believe  that  all 
that  the  human  mind  has  ever  accomplished  is  but  the  dream 
before  the  awakening.  We  can  not  see,  there  is  no  need  for 
us  to  see,  what  this  world  will  be  like  when  the  day  has  fully 
come.  We  are  creatures  of  the  twilight.  But  it  is  out  of 
our  race  and  lineage  that  minds  will  spring,  that  will  reach 
back  to  us  in  our  littleness  to  know  us  better  than  we  know 
ourselves,  and  that  will  reach  forward  fearlessly  to  compre- 
hend this  future  that  defeats  our  eyes.  All  this  world  is 


Chemistry  and  Civilization 

heavy  with  the  promise  of  greater  things,  and  a  day  will 
come,  one  day  in  the  unending  succession  of  days,  when 
beings  who  are  now  latent  in  our  thoughts  and  hidden  in  our 
loins,  shall  stand  upon  this  earth  as  one  stands  upon  a  foot- 
stool, and  shall  laugh  and  reach  out  their  hands  amidst  the 
stars. 


APPENDIX 

NITROGEN  SUPPLIES 
COMPILED  UNDER  THE    INSTRUCTION  OF  THE  AUTHOR 

BY  CABLETON  H.  WRIGHT 
Lieutenant-Commander.  U.  S.  N. 
January  6,  1920 


NITROGEN  SUPPLIES 

Under  the  stimulus  of  the  demand  for  nitric  acid  for  use 
in  the  manufacture  of  explosives  in  the  late  war  such  prog- 
ress was  made  in  the  development  of  processes  and  the  con- 
struction of  plants  for  the  fixation  of  the  nitrogen  of  the 
air  that  all  the  leading  nations  of  the  world  with  the  single 
exception  of  the  United  States  are  now  practically  inde- 
pendent of  imports  of  the  nitrates  so  necessary  in  times  of 
peace  for  prosperity,  and  in  times  of  war  for  success  in 
battle. 

The  normal  imports  into  this  country  total  nearly  600,- 
000  tons  of  sodium  nitrate  yearly,  yet  there  is  now  in  ac- 
tual operation  for  the  fixation  of  the  nitrogen  of  the  air  just 
one  plant,  and  it  has  a  maximum  production  of  less  than 
5,000  tons  of  nitric  acid  yearly.  This  is  a  privately  owned 
plant,  operating  on  the  arc  principle,  the  oldest  of  all  the 
methods  of  fixation. 

The  methods  that  have  been  commercially  developed  in 
other  countries  are,  in  the  order  of  their  establishment : 

(a)  Arc  process. 

(b)  Cyanamid  process. 

(c)  Haber  process. 

(d)  Cyanide  process. 

THE    ARC    PEOCESS 

There  are  several  modifications  of  this  process  in  use,  but 
in  all  of  them  the  intense  heat  of  the  electric  arc  is  used  to 

135 


136  Appendix 

cause  the  direct  combination  of  the  oxygen  and  nitrogen  of 
the  air.  The  NO  formed  in  the  arc  is  oxidized  to  NO2  and 
the  latter  is  absorbed  in  water  to  form  weak  nitric  acid  (30- 
35%  HNO3).  The  waste  heat  may  be  economically  em- 
ployed to  increase  the  concentration  of  the  acid  as  a  fur- 
ther step. 

The  power  requirements  for  this  process  are  extremely 
high  —  at  least  £.33  HP  per  year  being  required  for  each 
ton  of  acid  produced,  thus  practically  prohibiting  the  adop- 
tion of  this  in  the  United  States,  except  where  unusually 
cheap  power  is  obtainable.  When  power  can  be  obtained 
at  a  rate  of  $10.00  per  HP-year  or  less,  the  manufacture  of 
nitric  acid  by  this  process  will  probably  be  profitable  in 
large  plants  if  a  market  for  the  difficultly  transportable 
product  is  close  at  hand.  So  far  as  is  known  there  is  no 
place  in  the  United  States  where  large  amounts  of  power 
can  be  secured  at  this  rate,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
the  proposed  Columbia  River  power  project  near  The  Dalles, 
Oregon,  and  this  location  is  not  suitable  because  of  the  dis- 
tance from  a  market  for  the  product.  It  is  possible,  how- 
ever, that  in  some  parts  of  the  country  arrangements  could 
be  made  to  obtain  power  from  the  off  peak  load  of  power 
supplying  companies  at  such  a  rate  that  the  manufacture  of 
nitric  acid  by  the  arc  process  will  be  profitable  in  this  coun- 
try. In  Norway,  where  the  power  costs  are  very  low,  a  large 
amount  of  acid  is  made  by  this  process,  but  even  there  the 
cyanamid  process  seems  to  be  found  the  more  profitable. 

In  this  country  the  high  installation  cost,  large  power 
requirements,  and  improbability  of  being  able  to  operate 
at  full  capacity  in  time  of  peace  more  than  equalize  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  process,  namely,  free  raw  material  and  low 
labor  cost. 


K 

L, 

sd 
<"  , 


Appendix  137 

THE  CYANAMLD  PEOCESS 

The  cyanamid  process  has  been  very  extensively  adopted, 
plants  being  in  operation  in  Norway,  Germany,  Spain, 
France,  Italy,  Great  Britain,  Japan  and  Canada. 

The  first  step  in  the  cyanamid  process  is  the  heating  of 
lime  with  coke  or  anthracite  coal  in  an  electric  furnace  to 
form  calcium  carbide.  The  carbide  is  then  finely  ground 
out  of  contact  with  air.  Next  it  is  heated  to  redness  and 
nitrogen  gas  from  a  liquid  air  system  is  passed  through. 
The  carbide  adds  nitrogen  to  form  calcium  cyanamid, 
CaCN2.  The  cyanamid  is  then  ground  to  remove  any  acety- 
lene which  may  have  been  formed  due  to  contact  of  the 
carbide  with  moisture. 

The  cyanamid  can  be  used  direct  as  a  fertilizer,  or  it  may 
be  treated  with  steam  in  autoclaves  to  convert  the  nitrogen 
to  ammonia.  The  reaction  is: 

CaCN2  -f  3H20  = 


The  advantages   of  the  cyanamid  process,  viewed  from 
the  possibility  of  its  adoption  in  this  country  are: 

(1)  The  power  requirements  are  moderate. 

(2)  The  cyanamid  finds  a  ready  market  as  a  fertilizer. 

(3)  The  products  are  readily  transportable. 

(4)  The  process  is  well  understood  and  has  passed  be- 
yond the  initial  experimental  stage. 

The  disadvantages  of  the  cyanamid  process  are: 

(1)  Large  number  of  operations  and  plant  installations. 

(£)  Large  labor  factor. 

(3)  Undesirable  working  conditions  for  labor  because  of 
dust  and  dirt. 

(4)  Cost  of  product  as  ammonia  probably  higher  than 


138  Appendix 

by  Haber  process.     Cost  as  fertilizer  should,  however,  be 
lower. 

(5)   Patents  controlled  in  this  country  by  one  company. 

THE    HABER    PROCESS 

In  the  Haber  process  nitrogen  from  the  air  and  hydrogen 
from  water  or  any  other  available  source  are  directly  com- 
bined at  high  temperatures  and  pressures  in  the  presence 
of  a  catalyst  to  form  ammonia.  This  process  was  devel- 
oped in  Germany  and  during  the  latter  part  of  the  war  was 
the  principal  source  of  fixed  nitrogen  there.  So  far  no 
other  country  has  been  able  to  get  a  plant  into  satisfactory 
operation  on  a  commercial  scale.  Because  of  the  high  tem- 
peratures and  pressures  required,  the  metallurgical  difficul- 
ties to  be  overcome  are  even  greater  than  those  of  a  strictly 
chemical  nature. 

In  the  Appau  plant,  one  of  the  largest  in  Germany  oper- 
ated on  the  Haber  principle,  the  hydrogen  is  obtained  from 
the  water  gas  manufactured  at  the  plant.  The  average  per- 
centage composition  of  the  gas,  by  volume  is : 

H    49%     C02 3%' 

CO 43%     N 5% 

The  proportion  of  nitrogen  is  increased  by  mixing  in 
generator  gas  of  the  following  composition: 

H    6%     C02 5% 

CO    24%     N    63% 

CH4    2% 

The  CO  in  the  gas  is  converted  to  C02,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  further  supply  of  hydrogen  is  added  by  mixing  the 
gas  with  steam  at  a  temperature  of  400-500°  C.  in  the 
presence  of  a  catalyst  which  is  principally  iron  oxide  with  a 


Appendix  139 

very  small  percentage  of  other  oxides,  such  as   chromium 
oxide.     The  reaction  is  as  follows: 

CO+H2O^CO2+H2+10  calories. 

A  slight  excess  of  steam  is  required,  but  too  great  an 
excess  must  be  avoided  to  prevent  lowering  of  the  tempera- 
ture. 

The  CO2  in  the  gas  is  now  eliminated  by  compression  at 
20  kg.  per  sq.  cm.  in  contact  with  water.  Any  residual  CO 
or  CO2  remaining  after  this  treatment  is  eliminated  by 
copper  formate  or  copper  chloride  under  a  pressure  of  200 
kg.  per  sq.  cm. 

The  proportion  of  nitrogen  to  hydrogen  is  kept  below 
1/3  until  just  before  reaching  the  ammonia  catalyst.  Then 
the  required  amount  is  added  from  a  liquid  air  machine. 

Information  about  the  catalysts  used  has  been  jealously 
guarded,  but  it  is  known  that  various  substances  will  bring 
about  the  synthesis,  among  the  most  satisfactory  being  pure 
iron  or  various  of  the  rare  metals.  Methane  is  not  a 
poison  for  the  ammonia  catalysts,  but  practically  all  the 
other  hydrocarbons  are. 

The  synthesis  takes  place  in  autoclaves  at  a  temperature 
of  400-600°  C.,  and  at  a  pressure  of  about  WO  atmospheres. 

At  the  start  of  the  operation  2%  to  6%  of  oxygen  is 
added  and  the  action  begun  by  an  electric  spark.  The  gas 
after  catalysis  contains  about  6%  of  ammonia.  This  am- 
monia is  absorbed  by  water,  a  20%  solution  being  obtained. 
The  unconverted  nitrogen  and  hydrogen  are  returned  to 
the  autoclaves  for  a  repetition  of  the  cycle.  The  yield  is 
70%  to  90%  of  the  calculated. 

The  advantages  of  the  Haber  process  are: 

(1)  Probably  the  cheapest  method  of  manufacture  of 
synthetic  NH3. 


140  Appendix 


Ammonia  is  obtained  in  a  pure  condition. 

(3)  Raw  materials  are  readily  available. 

(4)  Small  plants  can  be  erected  wherever  needed. 
The  disadvantages  are: 

(1)  Details  of  the  process  have  not  been  worked  out  on 
a  manufacturing  scale  outside  of  Germany. 

(2)  Difficult  engineering  problems  are  still  to  be  solved. 

(3)  The  initial  costs  are  high,  and  the   repair  and  re- 
newal costs  large,  particularly  during  the  early  stages  of 
development. 

THE  CYANIDE  PROCESS 

In  the  cyanide  process  ground  coke,  or  carbon  in  any 
other  form,  and  sodium  carbonate  are  heated  to  redness 
in  contact  with  finely  divided  iron  in  the  presence  of  pure 
nitrogen,  or  even  of  air,  and  the  formation  of  sodium  cya- 
nide results.  Waste  nitrogen  from  sodium  carbonate  plants 
or  from  wood  pulp  plants  can  profitably  be  used  with  this 
process.  The  sodium  cyanide  produced  can  be  treated 
with  water,  and  ammonia  be  produced. 

The  manufacture  of  ammonia  by  this  process  is  too  costly 
to  compete  with  the  Haber  or  the  Cyanamid  processes  as  a 
source  of  ammonia  in  time  of  peace,  but  as  a  source  of 
supply  of  cyanide  for  use  in  the  gold  and  silver  smelting  in- 
dustries it  seems  to  offer  commercial  possibilities  when  fa- 
vored by  local  advantages.  The  process  has  not  been 
greatly  developed  abroad. 

OXIDATION  OF  AMMONIA  TO  NITRIC  ACID 

Any  pure  ammonia,  no  matter  how  obtained,  can  be  easily 
oxidized  to  nitric  acid  with  a  yield  of  90-95%.  The  oxida- 
tion takes  place  in  autoclaves,  the  catalyst  used  being 
finely  divided  platinum  guaze.  A  temperature  of  about  700° 


Appendix  141 

is  required  for  the  synthesis.  In  the  Ostwald  process  as 
developed  abroad  this  temperature  is  obtained  by  preheat- 
ing the  ammonia  and  air  going  to  the  autoclaves,  but  the 
process  as  developed  in  this  country  by  the  General  Chemical 
Company  in  collaboration  with  the  Bureau  of  Mines  takes 
advantage  of  the  fact  that  the  action  is  exothermic,  and 
in  this  modified  process  no  outside  heat  is  required  after  the 
action  is  once  started. 

BY  PRODUCT  AMMONIA 

In  addition  to  the  ammonia  manufactured  by  synthetic 
methods,  a  potential  supply  is  available  in  all  industrial 
countries  in  the  ammoniacal  liquor  which  is  one  of  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  distillation  of  bituminous  coal  in  gas  works  or 
coking  ovens.  As  is  well  known,  this  country  has  been 
far  behind  the  nations  of  Europe  in  the  adoption  of  the 
byproduct  type  of  oven  for  the  coking  of  coal.  The  demand 
for  coal  tar  products  during  the  war  caused  some  improve- 
ment in  the  situation,  but  we  are  still  very  far  from  being 
in  a  satisfactory  condition  so  far  as  the  recovery  of  all 
possible  byproducts  is  concerned. 

If  the  American  dye  industry  becomes  established  on  a 
firm  footing,  thus  insuring  a  continued  market  for  the  coal 
tar  products,  and  the  present  high  price  of  ammonia  holds, 
it  is  but  natural  to  expect  that  the  highly  desirable  replace- 
ment of  the  wasteful  beehive  type  of  coking  oven  by  the 
byproduct  type  will  continue.  The  great  room  for  im- 
provement still  remaining  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
present  production  of  byproduct  ammonia  in  this  country 
is  now  in  the  neighborhood  of  125,000  tons  per  year,  while 
the  possible  recovery  from  coal  now  coked  is  approximately 
700,000  tons.  Increase  in  the  amount  of  coal  coked  is  to 
be  desired  from  a  viewpoint  of  national  efficiency,  and  there 


Appendix 

seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  recovery  of  byproduct 
ammonia  thus  can  be  made  greater  than  1,000,000  tons  an- 
nually. Thus  from  this  one  source  all  the  present  needs  of 
the  country  for  fixed  nitrogen  could  be  supplied,  for  only 
an  inexpensive  purification  of  byproduct  ammonia  is  re- 
quired before  it  can  be  oxidized  to  nitric  acid. 

It  should  be  noted  that  while  all  the  present  needs  of  the 
country  could  be  supplied  from  this  source,  very  slow  prog- 
ress is  being  made,  and  long  before  the  possible  limit  from 
this  source  has  been  reached  the  demand  will  have  increased 
beyond  the  possibility  of  its  being  completely  satisfied  from 
this  source. 

THE   SYNTHETIC   NITROGEN   SITUATION   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES 

In  view  of  the  progress  now  being  made  in  Europe,  the 
question  naturally  arises,  "Why  is  similar  progress  not  be- 
ing made  in  the  United  States?"  The  development  of  proc- 
esses for  the  fixation  of  nitrogen  takes  years  of  patient  work 
by  skilled  chemists,  with  large  funds  available  to  cover  the 
expenses  of  experimentation  and  development.  In  Europe, 
and  particularly  in  Germany,  every  encouragement  has 
been  given  by  the  government  and  the  experimenters  were 
given  every  facility  and  all  the  funds  they  needed.  Also 
the  urge  of  absolute  necessity  during  the  late  war  caused 
them  to  make  redoubled  efforts.  In  this  country  investiga- 
tors and  pioneers  were  given  no  material  encouragement 
or  assistance  until  a  very  short  time  before  our  entry  into 
the  war. 

Private  capital  now  hesitates  to  engage  in  the  construc- 
tion and  operation  of  plants  in  this  country  for  the  fixa- 
tion of  atmospheric  nitrogen  because  of  the  following: 

(a)  Doubt  as  to  ability  to  compete  commercially  with 
imports,  either  of  Chili  saltpeter  or  of  synthetic  nitrates 


Appendix  143 

from  the  well  established  industry  in  Europe,  particularly 
Germany. 

(b)  Uncertainty  as  to  the  market  in  the  United  States. 

(c)  Uncertainty  as  to  the  future  status  of  the  govern- 
ment-owned plants  at  Muscle  Shoals,  particularly  the  Cyan- 
amid  plant. 

(d)  Incomplete  data  on  the  details  of  operation  of  the 
Haber  process. 

These  causes  of  hesitation  will  be  discussed  in  the  order 
given  above. 

PROBABLE    PRICE    OF    IMPORTS 

The  lessening  demand  for  Chili  saltpeter  in  Europe  ber 
cause  of  the  entry  of  the  synthetic  nitrates  into  the  market 
will  probably  cause  some  drop  in  the  price  in  the  effort 
of  the  producers  to  retain  their  market  in  this  coun- 
try, and  even  to  make  up  to  some  extent  for  the  loss 
of  the  European  market.  The  price  cannot  go  much  below 
the  pre-war  figure,  however,  for  the  producer's  profit  at  a 
market  price  of  $40.00  per  ton  f.  o.  b.  Chili,  was  less  than 
$10.00  a  ton.  Serious  labor  troubles  in  the  Chilean  nitrate 
fields  in  recent  years  have  so  increased  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion that  the  profit,  even  at  the  old  rate,  is  extremely  small 
and  leaves  no  room  for  price  cutting.  Of  course,  the  price 
could  be  reduced  if  the  export  duty  imposed  by  the  Chilean 
government  were  reduced,  but  such  reduction  will  meet  with 
bitter  opposition,  and  is  possible  only  in  the  distant  future 
as  a  last  effort  to  save  the  market. 

The  well  established  German  Synthetic  nitrogen  industry 
should  very  soon  have  large  quantities  of  fixed  nitrogen 
products  available  for  export.  The  present  rates  of  ex- 
change particularly  favor  dumping  in  this  country,  and 
unless  the  American  firms  about  to  engage  in  the  industry 


"Appendix 

are  given  artificial  protection,  they  will  find  it  impossible  to 
meet  the  German  prices,  at  least  until  the  American  industry 
is  firmly  established. 

THE    MAHKET 

The  market  in  this  country  has  hardly  been  scratched 
on  the  surface.  The  amounts  of  ammonia  and  nitric  acid 
used  for  industrial  purposes  are  increasing  steadily.  The 
greatest  possible  increase  is  probably  in  the  fertilizer  in- 
dustry. Germany  before  the  war  used  seven  times  as  much 
fertilizer  per  cultivated  acre  as  we  do  in  this  country.  Since, 
the  demand  for  greater  production  per  acre  must  be 
largely  met  by  increased  use  of  fertilizer,  and  since  the 
only  source  of  fertilizer  that  can  be  greatly  increased  is 
either  imported  or  artificially  fixed  nitrates,  it  is  readily  seen 
that  the  market  must  show  constantly  increasing  demands. 

Despite  the  numerous  predictions  made  during  the  war 
that  the  bottom  would  drop  out  of  the  nitrate  market  upon 
the  cessation  of  hostilities,  the  price  has  remained  remark- 
ably firm.  Even  within  the  last  month  a  further  rise  in 
the  market  price  of  ammonium  sulphate  has  been  recorded. 

THE  DISPOSITION  TO   BE  MADE  OF  THE  MUSCLE  SHOALS  PLANTS 

The  Nitrate  Division  of  the  Army  has  retained  the  two 
plants  at  Muscle  Shoals,  known  as  Nitrate  Plants  No.  and 
No.  2. 

Plant  No.  1  has  a  rated  capacity  of  10,000  tons  of  am- 
monia per  year.  It  is  designed  for  operation  on  the  Gen- 
eral Chemical  Company's  principle.  This  is  really  a  modi- 
fication of  the  Haber  principle,  the  principal  difference  being 
that  the  General  Chemical  Company  System  uses  a  pres- 
sure of  about  100  atmospheres  in  the  ammonia  catalysis  au- 


Appendix  145 

toclaves,  while  the  Haber  system  uses  200  atmospheres. 
Plant  No.  1  was  built  as  a  war  emergency  measure,  under 
the  full  realization  that  the  General  Chemical  Company's 
process  had  not  yet  been  fully  developed  on  a  manufacturing 
scale  and  that  expensive  changes  in  processes  and  equip- 
ment would  probably  have  to  be  made  as  more  complete 
knowledge  of  the  most  efficient  working  conditions  was  ob- 
tained. The  plant  has  operated  on  a  small  scale  for  the 
production  of  ammonia,  but  has  not  operated  on  a  quantity 
scale.  There  is  no  prospect  of  its  getting  into  quantity  pro- 
duction in  the  near  future,  as  several  changes  in  plant  ar- 
rangement and  equipment  are  necessary  and  no  funds  are 
available. 

The  Nitrate  Division  is,  however,  continuing  experimenta- 
tion, both  on  the  Haber  and  the  General  Chemical  Com- 
pany's systems,  with  the  idea  of  obtaining  all  necessary 
data  for  the  efficient  operation  of  the  plant  if  its  opera- 
tion is  decided  upon  and  funds  become  available.  All  in- 
formation received  concerning  the  methods  of  operation  of 
the  German  plants  is  confirmed  by  experiment.  The  greatest 
attention  has  been  devoted  to  two  subjects,  the  investiga- 
tion of  the  action  of  a  large  number  of  possible  catalysts, 
and  the  securing  of  a  steel  that  will  withstand  the  extremely 
high  temperatures  that  are  encountered  in  this  process. 
Recently  a  satisfactory  steel  has  apparently  been  obtained 
and  large  scale  tests  are  now  about  to  be  conducted.  The 
investigation  of  catalysts  is  still  under  way. 

Plant  No.  2,  which  was  built  to  operate  by  the  cyanamid 
process,  has  a  rated  capacity  of  220,000  tons  of  cyanamid 
yearly — the  equivalent  of  about  35,000  tons  of  ammonia. 
As  the  plant  was  built  with  the  cooperation  of  the  American 
Cyanamid  Company,  who  have  operated  a  small  plant  for 
ten  years  on  the  Canadian  side  of  Niagara  Falls,  compara- 


146  Appendix 

tively  few  development  difficulties  had  to  be  overcome,  and 
the  entire  plant  was  in  actual  operation  on  November  25, 
1918,  producing  ammonium  nitrate.  Operation  was  dis- 
continued shortly  thereafter,  however,  because  of  lack  of 
funds,  and  because  no  authority  existed  for  the  operation 
of  the  plant  for  the  manufacture  of  nitrates  and  fertilizers 
to  meet  the  commercial  demand. 

The  Kahn  bill,  now  before  Congress,  would  appropriate 
$12,000,000  for  the  operation  of  the  Muscle  Shoals  Plant 
for  the  supply  of  commercial  fertilizers  and  nitrates.  If 
this  bill  is  passed  it  is  the  intention  to  operate  one-third  of 
plant  No.  2,  using  the  different  sections  of  the  plant  in  ro- 
tation, so  as  to  keep  all  parts  of  the  plant  in  proper  condi- 
tion of  upkeep.  Two  million  dollars  would  be  used  for  re- 
pairs and  necessary  changes  and  the  remaining  ten  million 
used  as  an  operating  fund.  Three-quarters  of  the  produc- 
tion of  the  plant  would  be  devoted  to  ammonium  sulf  ate,  and 
the  remainder  to  mixed  products,  principally  ammonium 
nitrate.  The  idea  in  manufacturing  nitrate  is  to  keep  the 
ammonia  oxidization  part  of  the  plant  in  working  order, 
so  that  in  the  event  of  the  sudden  necessity  arising  for  the 
production  of  nitric  acid  by  the  entire  plant,  the  apparatus 
would  be  ready,  and  the  personnel  familiar  with  the  opera- 
tions. 

It  is  believed  that  ammonium  sulfate  can  be  delivered  by 
this  plant  at  a  cost  of  $35.00  per  ton,  with  such  a  rate  of 
profit  that  a  fair  interest  rate  will  be  given  on  the  $12,000,- 
000  now  requested,  and  a  small  amount  remain  over  for  the 
gradual  paying  off  of  the  original  $70,000,000  cost  of  the 
plant.  It  is  not  believed,  however,  that  the  plant  can  be 
run  at  a  profit  on  the  whole  $82,000,000  investment.  Inas- 
much as  there  is  no  chance  of  obtaining  anything  like  the 
original  cost  of  the  plant  if  it  is  sold  to  any  private  con- 


Appendix  147 

cern,  it  seems  advisable  for  the  government  to  undertake 
the  commercial  operation  of  the  plant  under  the  terms  of 
the  Kahn  bill. 

While  waiting  for  Congress  to  decide  as  to  the  disposi- 
tion to  be  made  of  the  plant,  the  Nitrate  Division  is  going 
ahead  with  experiments  looking  to  the  improvements  in  op- 
eration methods  of  the  plant.  At  present  attention  is 
being  devoted  to  the  methods  of  manufacture  of  the  various' 
commercial  fertilizers,  and  of  new  combinations  of  nitrogen 
containing  mixtures  for  use  as  fertilizers.  A  process  for 
the  development  of  urea  is  also  being  developed.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  disposition  to  be  made  of  the  sludge  from  the 
cyanamid  furnaces  is  also  being  investigated.  Formerly  this 
sludge  has  been  considered  as  of  no  value,  and  the  disposal 
of  700  tons  per  day  in  a  flat  country  like  that  near  Muscle 
Shoals  was  a  costly  operation.  Now  it  is  believed  that  the 
processes  under  investigation  for  the  recovery  of  the  15% 
of  graphite,  and  the  6%  of  sodium  hydroxide  contained  in 
the  sludge  will  pay  for  the  cost  of  the  disposal  of  the  resi- 
due and  return  a  good  profit  besides. 

THE     PRESENT     POSITION     OF     PRIVATE     FIRMS     INTERESTED     IN 
THE    SUBJECT 

The  American  Nitrogen  Products  Company  is  operating 
the  only  plant  now  engaged  in  the  fixation  of  atmospheric 
nitrogen  in  this  country.  The  plant  is  located  near  Taco- 
ma,  Washington.  It  is  operated  on  the  Birkelancl-Eyde  arc 
principle.  Power  is  obtained  from  the  City  of  Tacoma 
hydro-electric  power  plant,  using  the  off-peak  load.  In 
this  way  power  is  obtained  at  a  rate  less  than  the  actual 
average  cost  to  the  city,  and  }ret  the  arrangement  is  profit- 
able to  the  city,  because  it  is  a  revenue  producing  use  fo? 
what  would  otherwise  be  practically  wasted  power.  The 


148  Appendix 

company  seems  to  be  in  good  financial  condition,  and  has 
been  making  plans  for  considerable  expansion,  by  the  erec- 
tion of  their  own  power  plants  and  new  arc  plants  in  the 
mountains  of  British  Columbia.  Unless  they  have  been 
able  to  bring  about  almost  revolutionary  increases  in  econ- 
omy of  the  process,  however,  it  is  not  understood  by  those 
not  in  the  company  how  they  hope  to  operate  at  a  profit  in 
time  of  peace. 

The  American  Cyanamid  Company  is,  of  course,  enthu- 
siastic about  the  cyanamid  process.  They  control  the 
patents  on  this  process.  Their  enthusiasm  does  not,  how- 
ever, appear  to  be  leading  them  to  the  construction  of  a 
plant  in  this  country.  It  is  understood  that  they  have  made 
bids  on  the  cyanamid  plant  at  Muscle  Shoals,  but  that  this 
bid  was  such  a  small  percentage  of  the  original  cost  of  the 
plant,  as  not  to  indicate  very  great  confidence  in  their 
ability  to  make  the  operation  of  the  plant  a  financial  suc- 
cess in  the  face  of  the  competition. 

Other  companies  interested  in  the  subject  are  naturally 
inclined  to  await  the  outcome  of  the  Kahn  bill  before  going 
very  far  in  the  expenditure  of  money.  It  is  understood  that 
practically  all  of  them  believe  that  the  Haber  process  offers 
the  greatest  prospect  of  success.  The  Semet-Solvay  Com- 
pany has  already  made  application  for  the  right  to  the 
Haber  patents  in  this  country,  and  it  is  understood  that 
they  have  already  acquired  the  General  Chemical  Company's 
rights.  It  seems  very  probable  that  this  combination  will 
shortly  go  ahead  with  the  erection  of  a  plant  on  the  Haber 
principle,  regardless  of  the  outcome  of  the  Kahn  bill,  al- 
though they  would  of  course  much  prefer  to  see  the  Kahn  bill 
defeated.  This  plant  will  probably  be  located  near  Niagara 
Falls,  so  as  to  obtain  the  great  supply  of  free  hydrogen  that 
is  now  going  to  waste  in  the  bleaching  and  alkali  industries. 


INDEX 


Absolute  Zero,  120. 
Acetylene,  125. 
Aeroplane,  49. 
Agricultural  Chemistry,  96. 
Air  Nitrogen,  85,  134. 
Alchemy,  17. 
Alcohol,  118. 
Alkali  Industry,  56. 
American  Academy,  37. 
American  Potash,  97. 
American  Revolution,  21,  33. 
Aniline  Dyes,  71. 
Animal  Experimentation,  54. 
Applied  Chemistry,  55. 
Argon,  45. 

Artificial  Leather,  73. 
Aspdin,  Joseph,  66. 
Atomic  Explosions,  104. 
Atomic  Theory,  23. 
Atomic  Weights,  25,  60. 
Atomic  Year,  31. 
Augustine,  18. 
Avogadro,  24. 
Azoic  System,  13. 

Bacteria,  61. 
Backland,  78. 
Barilla,  56. 
Becquerel,  48. 
Benzene,  67,  87. 
Benzene  Ring,  69,  86. 
Benzine,  67,  69. 
Beruthsen,  77. 
Berzelino,  50,  60. 
Bessemer,  64. 
Black,  21. 

Boyle,  Robert,  19,  24,  38. 
British  Association,  45. 
Bromates,  97. 
Brownian  Movement,  118. 
Bunsen,  51. 


Camphor,  Synthetic,  79. 

Carbon  Linkage,  68. 

Carrell,  Doctor,  94. 

Catalyzers,  60. 

Catalytic  Poisons,  62. 

Cavendish,  Lord  Henry,  21,  38,  44. 

Celluloid,  73. 

Ceramic  Arts,  13,  66. 

Chemistry  and  Evolution,  13,  18. 

Chemistry  at  High  Temperatures, 

124. 

Chemistry  and  the  Future,  100. 
Chemistry  and  the  War,  79. 
Chilian  Nitrate,  85. 
Chlorine,  58. 

Coal  Tar  Industry,  68,  118. 
Coconut-Shell  Charcoal,  92. 
Colloids  and  Dispersoids,  112. 
Composition  of  Water,  41. 
Cooke,  Josiah,  43. 
Cracking  of  Petroleum,  126. 
Crookes,  Sir  William,  29,  76. 
Crystalloids,  114. 
Curie,  Madame,  103. 
Cyanamide,  85. 


Dakin,  95. 

Dalton,  23. 

Darwin,  13. 

Davy,  Humphrey,  36,  46. 

Davy  Safety  Lamp,  46. 

De  la  Rive,  47. 

Devonshire,  Dukes  of,  38. 

Dewar,  Sir  James,  43. 

Dichloramine-T,    95. 

Di  if  us-ion     and     Surface    Tension, 

115. 

Dissociation  Theory,  117. 
Du  Bois-Reymond,  48. 
Dyalysis,  114. 


149 


150 


Index 


Einstein  Theory,  106. 
Elections,  30,  110. 
Electro-Magnetism,  49. 
Electroscope,  102. 
Emulsions,  113. 
Enoch,  18. 
Enzymes,  61. 
Evolution,  13. 
Explosives,  83. 

Faraday,  46,  48,  67. 

Feldspar,  99. 

Fermentation,  53,  61. 

Fertilizers,  96. 

Fixation   of  Nitrogen,  41,   76,  80, 

83,  134. 

Food  Problem,  96. 
Franklin  Institute,  79. 
French  Academy,  57. 
French  Revolution,  21,  33. 
Future  of  Alcohol,  118. 

Gases,  Law  of,  19,  24. 

Gases,  Liquefaction  of,  120. 

Gas  Masks,  91. 

Gasoline,  119. 

Gay-Lussac,  23. 

Genesis  vi,  18. 

Germain,  Lord  George,  35. 

Germany  and  the  War,  42,  76. 

Gibbon,  35. 

Glaso,  56. 

Goethe,  32. 

Graham,  Thomas,  114. 

Greek  Civilization,  66. 

Haber  Process,  77,  136. 
Helium,    120,   123. 
Henry,  Joseph,  50. 
Hermeo  Trismegistus,  18. 
Herschel,  48. 
High  Explosives,  83. 
Hillebrand,  122. 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  36. 
Hofmann,  A.  W.,  67. 
Howe,  H.  M.,  62. 
Humboldt,  49. 
Hunter,    M.   A.,   92. 
Huxley,  53. 

Hydraulic  Cements,  66. 
Hydrogenation,  61. 
Hysteresis,  125. 


India  Rubber,  74. 

Indigo,  71. 

International  Congress,  25,  77. 

Internal  Combustion  Engine,  49. 

Invisible  College,  19. 

Iodine  Treatment  of  Wounds,  94. 

Iron  and  Steel,  62. 

Iron,  Pure,  65. 

Isomerism,  51. 

Isoprene,  74. 

Kekule,  69. 

La  Franciade,  57. 

Langley,  S.  P.,  50. 

Langmuir,  Irving,  30. 

Laughing   Gas,  36. 

Lavoisier,  21,  38. 

Law  of  Definite  Proportions,  23. 

Law  of  Gases,  19,  24,  116. 

Law  of  Gravity,  109. 

Law  of  Octaves,  28. 

Le  Blanc,  56. 

Leibnitz,  19. 

Liebig,  17,  22,  48,  50,  67. 

Liquefaction  of  Gases,  120. 

Louis  Napoleon,  48. 

Lunge,  57. 

Martin,  Geoffrey,  15,  26,  31. 

Mendeleeff,  28. 

Microscopic    Investigations,   112. 

Mitscherlich,  67. 

Modern  Aspects,  111. 

Molecules,  24. 

Molecular  Activity,  105. 

Moving  Picture  Films,  73. 

Mustard  Gas,  90. 

Myer,   Sothar,  28. 

Naden,  Constance,  15. 
Neptune,  28. 
Newlands,  28. 
Newton,  Isaac,  19. 
Niagara  Power,  58. 
Nitrocellulose,  73. 
Nitrogen,  19,  41,  96,  1S4. 

Oersted,  48. 
Open-Hearth  Steel,  65. 
Optical  Activity,  52. 
Organic  Chemistry,  68. 
Osmosis,  115. 
Oxygen,  19,  21,  38. 


Index 


151 


Paper,  118. 

Paracelsus,  18. 

Pasteur,  50,  53. 

Percussion  Caps  and  Primers,  97. 

Periodic   Classification,   28,   29. 

Petroleum,  126. 

Philippe   Egalite,  5G. 

Phlogiston,  19. 

Phosphorescence,  101. 

Piano-forte     Keyboard     Analogy, 

27. 

Pitchblende,  103. 
Poison  Gases,  89. 
Potash,  56,  96. 
Prehistoric  Chemistry,  14. 
Priestley,  21. 
Prout's  Hypothesis,  99. 
Protyle,  29. 

Rabies,  Cure  for,  53. 

Radiant  Energy,  106. 

Radio-Activity,  103. 

Radium,  100. 

Radium  Emanation,  105. 

Ramsay,  Sir  Wm.,  45. 

Rayleigh,  Lord,  42. 

Reign  of  Terror,  55. 

Roebuck,  John,  59. 

Roentgen,  100. 

Royal    Institution,   36,  42,   46,  48, 

127. 

Royal  Society,  21,  35,  38. 
Rumford,  Count,  34,  37,  40. 
Rutherford,  19,  100. 

Scheele,  21,  38. 

Siemens-Martin  Process,  65. 

Smithson,  John,  50,  106. 

Smithsonian   Institution,  106. 

Soap,  56. 

Spectrum  Analysis,  51. 

St.  Gobain  Glass  Works,  57. 

Stahl,  G.  E.,  19. 

Sulfite  Liquors,  118. 

Sulfur,  59. 


Sulfuric  Acid,  58. 
Surface  Tension,  116. 
Synthetic  Chemistry,  72. 
Synthetic  Rubber,  74. 

Telegraphy,  49. 

Tennyson,  50. 

Tertullion,  18. 

Theories  of  Matter,  23,  109. 

Theory  of  Solutions,  117. 

Thermometry,  120. 

Thompson,  Benjamin,  34. 

Thomsen,  J.  J.,  30. 

Tilden,  Sir  Wm.,  15,  111. 

T.N.T.,  89. 

Toluene,  89. 

Transcendental  Chemistry,  17. 

Turpentine,  73. 

Tyndall,  46. 

Ultra-Microscope,  112. 
Ultra  Violet  Rays,  113. 
Uranium,  101. 
Uranus,  28. 

Van  Helmont,  18. 
Van  t'  Hoff,  116. 
Volta,  50. 

Waltire,  John,  41. 
Ward,  Joshua,  59. 
Water,  Composition  of,  41. 
Wells,  H.  G.,  127. 
Wentworth,  Governor,  34. 
Whitney  and  Wadsworth,  13. 
Whitney,  W.  R.,  45. 
Wireless  Telegraphy,  49. 
Wollaston,  48. 

X  Rays,  100. 

Yeasts,  61. 

Zosimus  of  Panopolis,  18. 


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